The end of the night (25 page)

I can say a few very obvious things, but I now know them to be true. You cannot know yourself. No man can know himself. No man can detect or define the purpose of his own existence, but it is the dull man who ceases all conjecture.

And there is this, too. We all—every one of us—^walk very close to the shadows, to strange dark places, every day of our Uves. No man stands in a perfectly safe place. So it is dangerously smug to say, I am immune. No one can tell when some slight chance, some random thing, may turn him slightly, just enough so that he will find that he is no longer in a safe place, and he has begun to walk into the shadows, toward unknown things that are always there, waiting to eat him.

Sandy drove circumspectly through Monroe that long-ago night, and it wasn't until after he had turned off onto Route 813 that he began to make time again. Speed felt good. I wanted to get far away from many things. I wanted to put a lot

of space and a lot of time between me and Kathy. And the salesman. And Nashville.

The world kept changing for us, moving faster toward some unknown climax. I kept trying not to think backward or forward, but to focus only on the moment after moment of actual existence. I could not think of what the end of it would be. It was too late to think of any return to normalcy. I begged more pills from Sandy. It put you way out where nothing bad could ever happen. All your senses were sharpened. You were with the best three people in the world, acquiring stories you could tell when you were an old, old man. It was like being fifteen again, after three cans of beer, eight of you in one car, rocketing home from the beach through the vacation night. After Sandy banged the brakes on and we came swerving to a stop, the wonderful tableau in front of the headlights, centered in the white glare, was like outdoor theater.

At first the man thought we were going to help, and it is even possible we would have helped had he reacted differently. It was all balanced on the edge of impulse. We had no plan. Everything was improvised. The man—he was tough and husky and scared sick about the girl—pushed it just far enough in the wrong direction, and in a little while, as soon as he and Shack started belting each other, I knew we would kill him. That's the way things were moving for us. It had become, perhaps in the instant the salesman died, a twisted kind of togetherness. Nan had the greatest need of it. It was a kick that shook her, so that her need had become geometric in its increase, a savage and necessary release for her. Sandy had begun to go the same way, but he was not so far along as Nan. But there was that need in both of them, and suddenly you could sense it. I cannot make any guess about Hernandez. He had only his normal brutish violence, without the emotional-sexual implications. I am not certain about myself. I knew I was one of them. I knew we would kill him. I wanted to be a part of it, but I think that it was partially a desire to put something in on the stack of memory, on top of Nashville.

Had there been more of it later on, I could have gotten onto the same kick-track as Nan and Sandy, possibly. But my need was related all the way back to Kathy in some way that made killing symbolic. I needed to help this man become dead because Kathy was dead. It makes no sense. But it is as close as I can come.

After I had moved in on him, he hit me so solidly just under

the ear that the sky spun, my eyes ran and my knees were jellied. It was good to be hit so hard. It called for extra effort It provided a certain amount of excuse. And I was in it, a part of it, my identity, submerged into the group until, like awakening from a dream, I saw Nan working that knife into him, and saw her face, and it was like looking down into the lowest pit of hell. Blood looked black on her fist and wrist. I raised my foot, put it against his hip, and shoved the body off the back slant of the car into the ditch to get it away from her. She stood, shaking all over, the breath gasping out of her, then stooped to wipe the blade and her h and on the grass of the ditch bank.

The girl was sitting up. She was beautifuL

"The little lady has drawn the lucky number and won the moonlight tour. Bring her along," Sandy said.

I stepped in ahead of Shack. Nan and I got her onto her feet. She was dazed and docile. In the headlights I saw a lump over her right ear, the blond hair bloody and matted. We got her into the back, in the middle, on my left, between Nan and me. Shack was in front, crouched over, counting the dead man's money by the light of the dash panel

"We're rich!" Sandy crowed when Shack gave him the total

My knees still felt trembly. The blow I had taken had given me a headache. The knuckles of my right fist were puffy and tender. I was very conscious of the girl beside me, sitting perfectly still.

"One less flannelhead in the world" Sandy said.

"I thought you loved them all, every one," I said.

"I do, I do, dear boy. God loves them too. He made so many of them. Nan, darling, turn around and keep your creepy little face in that back window. Our new lovely darling will be missed by somebody. I want to pile up those fine, fat miles tonight. Bleat if you see lights moving up on us, Nano."

"Why the hell did we have to bring her?" Nan demanded*

"Chivalry, dear. Old-fashioned, warmhearted chivalry. She had no transportation and no escort. What else could I do?"

"We need more women," Shack said.

The girl spoke then. "I want to go home, please," she said politely. It was a very small, clear, childish voice. I knew I had heard a voice just like that before, and it took me a few moments to remember that it had been at a party where one of those ubiquitous amateur hypnotists found that my date was a very good subject So he had "regressed" her back to, I believe.

the third grade in school. And she had spoken in this same childish voice.

A car passed us, going in the opposite direction, and for a moment I could see her face in the headlights. She was looking at me gravely and politely, but I had the impression she was close to little-girl tears.

"What's your name, dear?" I asked her.

"Helen Wister."

"How old are you, Helen?"

"What?"

"How old are you?"

"Fm—almost nine."

Sandy gave a whoop of laughter and Shack said, "That's the biggest goddam nine-year-old broad I ever . . ."

"Shut up!" I told them. "She's hurt. You can get one hell of a case of amnesia from a blow on the head."

"My head hurts and I want to go home, please," she said.

"This is spooky," Nan announced. "I don't Uke it."

"She could have a pretty bad brain injury, Sandy," I said.

"Now wouldn't tfiat be a dirty shame!"

"Hell, what good is she to you? We could dump her in one of these small towns."

"Very interesting," Sandy said. "The stratification of society at work. She comes from his own class. He recognizes that at once. So all of a sudden she's a sister. What's she done, Kir-boo? Touched your heart?"

"Well, what are you going to do with her?"

"I'll clue you, Samaritan. We keep her aboard. If she gets worse, we'll dump her, but not in any town, man. If she stays the same or gets better, she's for fun and games. Right Shack?"

"Fun and games, Sandy. You're the boss," Shack said.

"Please take me home!" Helen begged.

**We are taking you home, dear," I told her. "It's a long way.'*

"How long?"

"Oh, hours and hours. Why don't you take a nap, Helen? Here." I put my arm around her, pulled her head onto my shoulder.

"Jesus K. Christ!" Nan said.

"Jealous?" Sandy asked.

"Of a washed-out blonde with the crazies? Hell, no!"

The child-woman snuggled closer. She sighed heavily a few times. As quickly as any child, she sHd away into sleep.

We moved swiftly through the night in a whirring silence and then Sandy began, "Fee fie fiddly-I-oh, fee fie fiddly-I-oh, oh, oh, oh."

She wore a woman's perfume. Her hair tickled my neck. My left arm went to sleep, but I did not want to disturb her. Shack got out the gin bottle. He and Nan were the only ones who wanted any.

We were trapped, all of us, in that small, drumming place. We were united, like survivors of catastrophe, floating down a river on a roof. No matter what happened, it was going to happen to all of us.

Nan suddenly said, "Remember Louie? Remember Louie, Sandy? In E>ago?" There was a forced gaiety in her voice. It was a device she often used, this abrupt recollection of things shared, establishing hers as the closest relationship to Sandy.

"I remember that cat," he said.

"It was fun, Sandy."

"It was the greatest," he said in a tone of boredom.

The girl circled in my arm was clean and fresh, and her sleeping breath was humid against the base of my throat Something stirred in me in response to her helplessness, and yet at the same time I resented her. I had seen too danm many of these brisk and shining girls, so lovely, so gracious, and so inflexibly ambitious. They had counted their stock in trade and burnished it and spread it right out there on the counter. It was all yours for the asking. All you had to do was give her all the rest of your life, and come through with the backyard pool, cookouts, Eames chairs, mortgage, picture windows, two cars, and all the rest of the setting they required for themselves. These gorgeous girls, with steel behind their eyes, were the highest paid whores in the history of the world. All they offered was their poised, half-educated selves, one hundred and twenty pounds of healthy, unblemished, arrogant meat, in return for the eventual occupational ulcer, the suburban coronary. Nor did they bother to sweeten the bargain with their virginity. Before you could, in your hypnoid state, slip the ring on her imperious finger, that old-fashioned prize was long gone, and even its departure celebrated many times, on house parties and ski weekends, in becalmed sailboats and on cruise ships. This acknowledged and excused promiscuity was, in fact, to her advantage. Having learned her way through the jungly province of sex, she was less likely to be bedazzled by body hunger to the extent that she might make a bad match

with an unpromising young man. Her decks were eflBciently cleared, guns rolled out, fuses alight, cannonballs stacked, all sails set. She stood on the bridge, braced and ready, scanning the horizon with eyes as cold as winter pebbles.

One of these invincible ones slept against me, all weapons discarded for a time. I found her left hand, found her ring finger, felt the small, cool angles of the engagement stone. I wondered about her prey. I sensed that it was not the husky type we'd left dead in the ditch. No, this was one of the very special ones, so she would have had a large choice of game, like a hunter in a game preserve. So she had probably knocked down a trophy head, one who combined most of the advantages the girls of this station sought. He would be amiable, poUte, well-educated, tall and "interesting-looking." He would be witty, but not in any acid way that might inhibit their social life. He would be gregarious without being a jolly-boy full of life-of-the-party routines, because that is in bad taste. He would have that quiet drive, that unobvious ambition, which would take him high and far. His occupation would give them good social status, so he would be in one of the professions most probably, or he might be a junior executive type with a very reliable corporation. And, with all her tools and weapons, she would now have him noosed so firmly his eyes would be bulging. He would be so far gone he would be willing to trade his immortal soul for permanent legal uninterrupted access to her expensive panties.

Not for me, I thought. I shall never be suckered by that cold-hearted routine. And I suddenly reahzed that I had gone well beyond the point of choice. Even if I changed my mind and decided to fall in step with everybody else, it was now too late. Only in the animated cartoons could a small creature fall off a mountain, look down, register surprise, and climb back up through the empty air to safety.

She woke twice during the long night ride and each time she complained in a sleepy child voice about wanting to be home in her own bed.

Sandy found the place we would stay, shabby dusty cottages at a resort area called Seven Mile Lake. He had a special genius for picking safe places. It was good to hole up. He'd had the radio on a few times, and it sounded as if the whole world was looking for us. The radio told us we had grabbed the daughter of a wealthy surgeon, and she had been planning to marry an architect. We learned for the first time how two

witnesses had watched us kill the man. We found out his name was Arnold Crown, and that he had owned a service station. The world told us that we were despicable, heartless monsters, crazed by drugs, on a cross-country slay-fest.

We could not identify ourselves with the people they were describing. Sandy put it in words when he said. "They shouldn't oughta let people like that run around loose."

It broke us up.

I had no trouble with the slob woman who rented me the cottage. AU she had eyes for was the twenty-five dollars. We got our stuff out of the car trunk and went in and turned some hghts on. The bedrooms were off either side of the small sitting room. Nan escorted Helen to the bathroom, with Sandy warning her not to try anything cute with the blond. Sandy and I sat on a sagging couch, leaning back, our heels on a coffee table. Shack stood with the gin bottle and tilted it high, heavy throat pulsing. He lowered it and looked at Sandy. The tension was there, and it was building, and it made the pit of my stomach crawl. Shack's eyes were small, bright, hooded, vulgar —with long lashes, reminding me of the eyes of an elephant

"How about it, Sandy? How about it?" he asked.

"Shut up a while," Sandy told him.

"Sure, Sandy. Sure thing."

Nan brought Helen back. Gray was coming in the windows, feebling the hghts we'd turned on. There is a way a woman stands, and there is a way a child stands. Helen stood, toeing in slightly, chewing the first knuckle of her right hand, plucking at the side of her skirt with the other hand, regarding us solemnly. The look of her made the look of her breasts incongruous, so round against the green of her sleeveless blouse. Her diamond caught the light, refracting sharp glints of color. Her white skirt was of the material I beUeve is called dacron fleece. It had two high slash pockets, with a large green non-functional button on each pocket. Her green shoes were very pointed, with those tall, spidery heels, tipped with brass.