The Man in the Net (13 page)

“But they’re yours?” exclaimed Steve. “You admit they’re yours?”

“Have him try ’em on,” called one of the men again. “How can the guy be sure they’re his? Maybe there’s another painter around here wanting to burn up blue jeans.”

The circle contracted again. The hostility, the tension, the almost sexual excitation which had been there all the day was mounting. Steve looked from John to the men and then back to John. His features had sharpened into the features of a leader feeling his control over his men slipping away.

“Gee, boys, if the guy says they’re his …”

“Try ’em on. Try ’em on.” The words came in a chanted chorus. “What’s the matter, Mr. Hamilton? You modest? You scared of stripping down in front of a bunch of guys?”

One of the men sprang forward, grabbing at John’s belt. John swung at him. Steve Ritter shouted. But the excitement was unleashed. All the men plunged on to John, sending him sprawling to the ground. He was smothered in their hard, sweaty bodies. He felt hands groping for his belt and then tearing at his pants. Three of them were sitting on him; two others were tugging his pants down and then pulling on the jeans. The hands came up to his waist; then all the men were clambering off him. They took up their position again in a circle around him. He got up, buttoning the jeans at his waist.

“They fit,” cried one of the men. “It’s a perfect fit.”

They all started to laugh in a pulsing male roar and then, just as suddenly, were silent.

Sick with anger and disgust, John glanced down at his knees, protruding from the charred ends of the pants legs. Then, while the silence seemed to thicken, he pulled the blue jeans off and put his trousers back on.

The fever had left the men now. They moved awkwardly from one foot to another. One of them coughed. Steve Ritter, his face hard with annoyance, bent and picked up the blue jeans. The men had rejected his authority and now he was rejecting them.

“Okay, you guys.” His eyes glinting, he gestured with his thumb toward the road which stretched about twenty feet to the left. “Knock off. The party’s over. Get the hell back home—all of you.”

Hangdog, ashamed of themselves, the men started to stream away across the meadow to the road and up it toward where they’d parked their cars by the house.

Steve Ritter stood holding the blue jeans. Slowly he turned to John.

“So,” he said. And then, “Okay, boy, these jeans go to Captain Green. It’s not me anymore. It’s Captain Green. He’s the boss.” A ghost of the old, almost affectionate mockery showed behind the brilliance of his eyes. “I figure he’ll be wondering, don’t you, John? He’ll be wondering how come, on the day your wife disappeared, your blue jeans happened to get burnt up here in the meadow. Why burn ’em up? he’ll figure. Was there maybe something on ’em—something that was better off burning? That’s what he’ll figure. They got an analytical laboratory, the troopers, up to Springfield or some place. All the most modem gadgets. They’ll be able to find out. Even if there’s only the teensiest spot of…”

He stopped suddenly, his eyes challenging John. The anger was burning in John like acid. Someone had done this to him. Steve?
I didn’t want to… but he forced me … It’s like a disease
… Fling it at him, he thought.
You were my wife’s lover. You’ve murdered her. You’re pinning it on me.
But that wasn’t true. Steve hadn’t been Linda’s lover. That had been a lie born of devious, alcoholic malice. And why talk about murder? How did murder come into it? What was it but the assumption of the Enemy? A kind of cold, despairing calm descended on him. The known facts, the truth. Stick to the truth. It was the only weapon with which to fight the nightmare.

He said, “I’ve told you I don’t know anything about those jeans except that they’ve been taken from my studio. And, since it seems about time to say it again, I haven’t any more idea than you what’s happened to Linda.”

“Any more idea than me?” Steve’s lips stretched into the white grin. “Maybe you haven’t, John. Maybe you haven’t any more idea than me or all those other guys or Captain Green or, for that matter, the whole of Stoneville. Maybe we’ve all got the same idea.”

He touched John’s arm lightly. “Okay, John, boy. I guess you won’t be hearing from Captain Green today. What you done anyways to get Captain Green on your tail again? You didn’t burn those jeans. You’ve said so. You don’t know nothing to help the search. No, I guess you won’t be hearing from Captain Green, unless word of Linda comes through on the teletype, until they got those jeans checked up by the laboratory. Then, of course, seeing how they’re your property, I guess the Captain’ll keep you informed. That’s only civil, ain’t it?”

The hand on John’s arm gently caressed his skin. “So— you just take it easy and stay home painting some of them paintings. Don’t you start getting all twisted up inside or, before you know it, you’ll be the one needing the psychiatrist. How I figure it—there’s no cause to worry anyways. Linda’s going to show up, ain’t she, John? When she sobers up, gets all that liquor out of her system—bingo, she’ll show up like magic. Oh, John dear”—his voice raised into a mincing soprano—“how could I have done it—writing that terrible note, destroying all those lovely pictures in a drunken orgy? Oh, John, darling, forgive me …”

The grin still on his face, he turned abruptly and started across the meadow, dangling the charred jeans from his right hand.

WHEN JOHN reached the house, the phone was ringing three rings—his number on the party line. Don’t answer it, he thought. Whoever was calling, it was someone of the same breed as Steve Ritter and those red-faced, hamhanded men in the meadow. Reject them all. Pretend, for a while at least, that they didn’t exist. The finicky, tinkling rings sounded again. A sudden irrational optimism surged through him and he ran to the telephone.

A man’s voice—booming, meticulous, familiar … who was it?—said, “Hello, hello. Is that Hamilton?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, Hamilton, this is George Carey.”

That came as a shock. Surely, of all the people who now considered him a pariah, old Mr. Carey must be the first and foremost.

“Yes, Mr. Carey?”

“I’m sorry to hear about your wife, Hamilton. Very sorry. It all seems most odd.” The voice sounded stiff and awkward as if Mr. Carey felt the social necessity of making some comment but was finding it highly distasteful. “They are searching for her, I understand. They appear to be doing everything that can be done under the circumstances.”

“Yes,” said John.

“I’m calling,” said Mr. Carey, “because, as you may remember, the town meeting is being held tonight at eight. I realize this is not exactly—ah—precisely an easy time for you, but both Mrs. Carey and myself feel that you, as a resident, are as anxious as we to preserve the quality in Stoneville which means so much to all of us. The fight is going to be very close as you know. Every vote counts.” Mr. Carey cleared his throat. “There may have been a little misunderstanding between us the other night, Hamilton. Nothing serious. I hope you agree. But both Mrs. Carey and myself feel sure that your attitude toward the hotel project hasn’t changed and that you’ll be down there this evening, doing your part. That is, we’re both hoping you’ll register your vote against the sale of the north shore. We are both hoping it.”

John’s first reaction was vague astonishment that, in a world which for him had turned completely insane, Mr. Casey could still be worrying about whether or not a hotel was built on the north shore of the lake. Then, merging with the astonishment, came indignation at the old man’s gall.
There may have been a little misunderstanding between us the other night.
That was his cynical token gesture of apology
. Smooth him down. Probably what they’re saying about him is true. Probably he murdered his wife. But a vote is a vote.

Before he said anything, Mr. Carey continued, “Of course, Hamilton, we’re not exacting any promise from you. I only want you to know that we’re relying on you.” The receiver at the other end of the wire clicked down. John went, at random, into the living-room and sat down on the couch. He tried to think of Linda. Where was she? What had become of her? But he seemed unable to have any feelings about her at all and even the memory of her face was blurred in his mind. It was as if she had never existed and was some almost legendary figure whose only function had been to create for him this new obscene world of unreality.

The sensation of lethargy which had been growing on him all day was more potent now even than the anger. This, he realized, was going to be his greatest enemy—this feeling of hopelessness, almost of doom. What had come had come—submit to it. It was the victim psychology. The village had chosen him as a victim and, in choosing him, it was as if, ichneumonlike, it had injected into him a paralyzing serum that stultified all action. What was there to do anyway? Inch by inch, ever since he’d found the note on the typewriter, the net had been closing around him. The suitcase—the blue jeans …

Now news of the blue jeans would be crackling through the village.
He
killed her.
He
was wearing the blue jeans. 
He
tried to burn them.
He
faked the note.
He
slashed his own pictures.
He
packed her suitcase to make it like she’d gone away and threw it on the dump.
He
went to New York with Brad as his unwitting dupe to stage an alibi. 
He
tried to make the troopers believe she was crazy …

Those were the words. At that very minute, they were being spoken in the post-office, in the store. Groups were gathering in the street, under the maple trees. He thought of the town meeting in the Assembly Rooms at eight with everyone there, the whole village gathered together. Sudden terror of the mob—a mob of red faces, heavy, sweating bodies, a huge magnification of the men in the meadow— invaded him. For a moment it was as if he were actually there hemmed in by them in the Assembly Rooms.

Get away, he thought. Get in the car, drive like hell. At least there was still space. Put space—miles and miles of it —between him and the nightmare.

Oddly, that momentary yielding to hysteria saved him because the anger rose to challenge it, smashing through the lethargy. They wanted him on the run. Of course they did. Let the victim run. Then the hunt could begin. But why should it be on their terms? Why should he let them infect him with a guilt which they had invented for him? He hadn’t done anything. Was it so hard to remember that? Stand up to them. Defy them. Don’t run from that town meeting. Go to it. March right in there….

The phone rang.

Almost light-headed, he went to answer it.

“John?” It was Vickie. Her quiet, ordinary voice belonged with his new mood of confidence almost as if by checking his panic he had willed it into being. “John, I’m absolutely disgusted. I just heard what Father did. He called you, didn’t he? He tried to bully you into going down to vote tonight?”

“He called,” said John.

“He’s certainly got his nerve. It’s just that he’s so hipped on the lake thing. He doesn’t even stop to think how other people might be feeling. John, I apologize for the whole family. Of course you’re not going to pay any attention to him.”

“I’m going to the meeting,” said John, his mind suddenly made up.

He heard her little gasp of astonishment. “But—but, I mean, do you realize how they are? Do you realize what they’re saying in the village? What…. ?”

“I know,” said John. “That’s why I’m going. I’ve nothing to hide. Why should I act as if I did?”

“But—gosh, you really mean that? You’re really going to stand up to them?”

“I’ve got to.”

“Yes. I do see. All right then. Go with us. With Brad and me. You might as well have some support.”

A kind of incredulous gratitude and affection came to him. “But, Vickie, what about Brad?”

“Don’t be silly, my dear. If you’re going, Brad certainly wouldn’t want you to go alone any more than I would. Come over here right now. Have something to eat with us. Then we’ll go together.”

He bathed and changed and drove to the Careys’. It was amazing how the balance had been restored. And when Alonso Phillips, smiling the way he always smiled, led him into the big living-room, he was back again in a world of ordinary, everyday dimensions. Neither Vickie nor Brad sympathized or made a point or acted in any wav differently from usual. Brad made them martinis; they drank them on the terrace where the sun, paling to evening, hung over the tree-tops above the glimmering smoothness of the lake; then they went in to dinner.

This, John knew, was definitely Vickie’s decision. Brad, for all his good manners, was only going along with his wife. There was too much of his father in him for his imagination to stretch beyond a certain point. John knew too that even Vickie wasn’t necessarily endorsing him by this gesture. For all he knew, she had suspicions of him too. But that, for Vickie Carey, wasn’t the point. To Vickie, he was a man in trouble, a man not to be condemned before he had even been accused—a man entitled to asylum.

They were drinking coffee in the living-room when a voice from the hall called, “Hi darlings. Ready?”

Roz Moreland appeared through the doorway, chattering. “No dawdling now. What will Daddy Carey say if the old brigade is late and … ?”

She saw John. Her voice stopped instantly and she stood looking at him with a mixture of astonishment and theatrical revulsion.

“Oh, I. . . Gordon and I thought we’d all go together. We thought …”

She retreated hastily through the door.

John got up. “I’m sorry. If you were planning to go with the Morelands …”

Brad looked unhappy.

Vickie said quickly, “Don’t be silly. Of course we hadn’t planned anything. They just dropped in. Really, that absurd woman.”

They finished their coffee, not hurrying. It was after eight when Brad put down his cup and, avoiding John’s eyes, said, “You’re set on going, John?”

“It’s the best thing to do.”

“Okay. Then we’re with you.” He turned to Vickie. “Ready, dear?”

“I’m ready.”

“Okay. The car’s outside. Let’s go.”