On the Other Hand, Death - Stevenson Richard - Страница 33

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He stared at me with hard, bitter eyes. "Lying for the higher cause, huh? Wicked means to a just end."

"Something like that. Yes. To save a life. Nothing terribly abstract or arguable about that."

"But it's still just your opinion."

"An informed opinion."

He started to speak, then just laughed once, harshly. At both of us, I thought charitably.

I said, "The phone here has been tapped by the police. If you call anyone, you'll be overheard. Did you know that?"

"No. But why should I care?" He turned away from me onto his side, and lay still except for his breathing, which came and went in deep sighs.

I left him there in the sticky heat and shut the door as I walked out. I passed the cop in the kitchen and went outside again. I sat on the veranda under the stars and tried very hard to rethink the whole bloody mess. I was sure I had been conned by a master. But I couldn't decide who he was.

16

• I walked down Moon Road toward

Central in the hazy starlight. A quarter-moon hung above the western horizon with three stars inside its crook, like an astrological sign. It was Saturday night on Central Avenue.

"Hi, bet you're a Taurus, aren't you, big guy?"

"No, but you're close. I'm a Presbyterian—born under the sign of a golf ball on a tee. I'm surprised you couldn't tell from the alignment of the divots on my skull."

"Well, you're certainly a weird one. Huh! Guess I'll just go dance some more. Last call's in ten minutes, but I could just dance forever."

"For sure."

The air was still, wet, black. I passed the Deems' house. The living room was lighted behind closed drapes in the picture window. The screen door was open and I could hear raised voices.

"I don't care! I don't care! I don't care!"

"Get back here, I'm not finished with you!"

More distant: "Jerry, not so loud!"

"No one in this family has ever broken the law! Joseph, if your grandfather—"

"I don't care! I'm sick of you! I'm sick of this place! I'm sick of all of you!"

"Go to your room!"

"Jerry!"

"I'm going! I'm going!"

"Jerry, don't hit him!"

"You selfish miser! I know you! I know you!"

The wooden door was eased shut. The voices became muffled. I stood in the shadows and waited. The wooden door flew open again, then the screen door. Joey Deem burst out into the night, charged across the lawn, flung open the driver's door of the T-bird, then banged it shut. The lock clicked.

Sandra Deem stepped out in a bathrobe and hair curlers and stood for a moment on the low stoop. She pressed her fingers across her cheek several times. Then she turned and went inside, closing both doors behind her.

I walked on down the road.

A light burned in the Wilson living room, and I crept up to a window in the darkness. Wilson was seated in an easy chair, a row of Pabst empties lined up on the table beside him. His gaze was fixed on a noisy spot across the room. "And as we move into the top half of the eleventh, inning, it's still all tied up, Yankees six, Brewers six." I could see Kay's immense bare legs hanging over the end of the couch.

I backtracked onto Moon Road and walked the remaining fifty yards down to Central. The Saturday night revelers traffic was heavy, but in the car dealer's lot across the avenue I could make out two figures seated in the front of a blue Dodge. It was the only Chrysler product in three acres of Hondas. I shot them a two armed Nixonesque victory sign, then turned and walked back toward Dot's.

Just after one-thirty I chose my spot. I brought an old Army blanket from the back of my car and placed it under the curtaining arch of a group of forsythia bushes, the kind of cool, secret bushy cave where I'd hidden from the world when I was eight. I stuffed one end of the blanket up into the thicket of branches to form a lumpy, scratchy backrest. The mammoth clump of bushes grew atop a slight rise halfway between a rear corner of the barn and the pear orchard, and I had an unobstructed view of the house, the mailbox, and, off in the other direction to my right, the farm pond.

I settled back and listened to the peepers, and the muted roar of traffic back on Central and from the interstate beyond the woods on the other side of Dot's house. A couple of times I heard rustling in the bushes down at the other end of the barn, and once I watched four men in flak jackets emerge from the barn and stumble into the foliage across Moon Road.

I smeared myself with insect repellant, which had little effect, though my constant scratching and slapping at the gnats and mosquitoes kept me from dozing off. The air was as heavy and tepid as a night in Panama. The fields smelled sweet.

At five to two the back door of the house creaked open. The outside spotlights had been shut off, but in the starlight I could make out McWhirter and the patrolman who'd been in the kitchen moving quickly across the lawn. They climbed into the back seat of Bowman's darkened car and carefully pulled the door shut, click-click. Then it was quiet again. I felt more alone than I wanted to.

At two-ten I was startled to see the back door of the farmhouse ease open yet again. Two figures emerged. One wore a long frilly bathrobe, peach-colored it seemed in the white starlight, and she poked the wobbly beam of a flashlight a few feet ahead of her.

Edith was followed across the veranda and onto the lawn by Dot, who carried towels and was clad in a red terry cloth beach robe, which hung loosely on her slight frame. The two women spoke in low voices and made their way across the damp grass toward the pond.

At the water's edge Dot set the towels on a wooden bench and let her robe fall away. Edith removed her robe and folded it carefully before placing it and the flashlight on the bench. Dot was naked, but Edith had been wearing a calf-length nightgown under her robe, and now Dot helped her hitch it up over her head and place it neatly alongside the folded robe.

Dot stepped into the water first and bent to splash her face and breasts.

"Oh, my! Oh, it's just grand, Edie!"

Edith moved her head about, up, down, right, left, trying to focus on the surface of the black water before

stepping down to it. Dot reached out and guided her. The two women stood waist-deep facing each other for a moment before Dot squeezed Edith's hand, let go of it, and let herself fall backwards into the water. She backstroked languidly to the far side of the pond while Edith watched, then turned and sidestroked back again.

Lowering herself into the water with a little cry of astonishment, Edith lay on her back and let her feet bob whitely to the surface. Dot also fell back now, and the two floated in lazy circles, exclaiming softly from time to time, as the moon rose higher above them.

When the women rose dripping from the water after a time, they gently wrapped towels around each other. After a moment Dot let her towel fall away and wrapped Edith's around the both of them as they embraced. They stood holding each other for a long time before they lay down together atop Edith's towel on the moon-whitened grass.

I lay back and looked up at the stars through the leafy branches of my cave, and I thought about my life. I said, Timmy.

1 7

I tried to focus on the luminous dial

of my watch, but it kept blurring out. I rubbed my eyes furiously, squinted, brought the watch up to within six inches of my better eye, backed it out to ten inches, and saw it. I squeezed my eyes shut, opened them, looked again, and said, "Christ."

It was ten to five.

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