Crawlspace (33 page)

We didn’t go back to bed at all. It was nearly dawn, so we stayed up trying to clean up as much of the mess as we could.

Sometime, shortly after Birge left, a large black car came out from town and picked up the body in our driveway.

After the sun had been up at least an hour I called the glazier in town and told him to come up. Then I called an exterminator and told him that some kind of an animal had died in my crawl and that I wanted to have it fumigated.

Then Alice and I went back to work, picking up the debris, trying to salvage things and mend those other things that had not been completely destroyed.

We spoke very little but worked on with a grim, almost obsessive, determination. I knew she was thinking about Richard just as I was—wondering if he was out in the bog or in the cave, or if he’d been smart enough to clear out of the territory completely. Of those three alternatives I fixed on the second, then preoccupied myself with the awful question of how long he would stay in the cave before he’d try to get back into the house. Then, too, there was the question of Birge. What would he do next? But there was really no question there. I knew exactly what he’d do next.

Shortly after, we heard a car pull up in the driveway. I imagined it was the glazier or the exterminator and simply went on with my work. The doorbell rang, but when I looked up, I saw neither a glazier nor an exterminator. Instead I saw Ezra Washburn at the kitchen door. He was standing there stony and awkward in his mackinaw, his funny hat with the ear laps folded up and his face partially thrust through the bar broken frame of the door, waiting to be acknowledged.

I opened the door and let him in. He stepped over the threshold stiffly, yanked off his cap, and peered around. He seemed to understand at a glance what had happened the night before.

“I come to tell you to get the boy out of here,” he said.

“He’s gone.”

“You sure? Not just hangin’ around the woods someplace, is he?”

I shook my head, playing dumb, not certain how candid I could be with him.

“If he’s just hidin’ out back someplace,” he went on, “they’re gonna get him. And if they do, they’ll kill him.”

A short, quiet moan escaped from Alice. Washburn looked at her and then at me. “A bunch of them is over to the jailhouse with Birge right now. Deputies he calls ’em. Drug’m all out of the tavern early this mornin’.” He made a face of pure contempt. “He’s issuin’ rifles. They don’t like nothin’ better than rifles, that bunch. Killed three young fellers here a couple a years back for break-in’ into the hardware store. Never was a trial or inquiry. Nothin’. Not a question asked.”

I was on the verge of telling him all. He sensed it and before I could, he headed me off.

“Don’t tell me nuthin’,” he waved his hand at me. “I don’t wanna hear it. Just get him out of here. As far away as you can. They’re comin’ out here now. If they find him, they’ll kill him and ask questions later.”

He reached for the door, and it fell off in his hands. He struggled with it for a moment doing a little dance with the teetering door while Alice and I flowed toward him. Then finally he leaned the thing back up against the corner of the jamb and clapped his hands as if he were cleaning them off. When he had done that, he turned back to us. “I liked the boy. He was a good boy.” Then he was gone.

The first cars arrived about ten-thirty, gathering at the foot of the driveway and alongside the road. Almost immediately there was an awful excitement—brakes screeching, doors slamming, dogs barking. In fifteen minutes there were nearly fifty men out there with nearly as many dogs howling and straining on leashes. All the men had rifles and wore troopers’ hats, although none of them were actual troopers—just a lot of scum and unemployed riff-raff coming out for the fireworks.

Alice and I kept on working and tried very hard not to notice them. But it was almost impossible to blot them out. At one point I simply went to the kitchen door and looked down at all the noise and confusion at the foot of the drive. There was almost a festive air to it—jesting and merriment—a lot of
gentlemen
come together for a fox hunt.

Birge’s car was the last to arrive. I could see the roof of the station wagon glide slowly through the milling throng and come to a halt. When the car door opened, the top of his hat suddenly appeared above the mob of converging men. I learned a little later that road blocks and checkpoints had been set up all along the Bog Road.

They huddled there and conversed for nearly half an hour, Birge’s immense figure soaring like a totem pole above all the others—giving directions, coordinating movements and final instructions to lieutenants. Then, quite suddenly, as if at a signal, they all fanned out in a wide skirmish line, and with the dogs barking and straining at their leashes, the men shouting and waving to each other, they entered the field alongside the property and started down toward the woods.

We watched them from the window until the woods swallowed the last of them up. But even hours later we could hear the barking of the dogs many miles off.

I don’t recall what Alice and I did during that time. I suppose we continued working—or pretending we were working. Actually, we were waiting—almost rigid with fright—and coiled to flinch at the first crack of a rifle shot. But there were no shots.

Late in the afternoon they were back again, streaming out of the woods behind the house, scrambling over the stone wall and moving down to the cars in small, weary knots of two and three. The dogs, free and off the leashes, nosed along the turf in front of them. All the straining, noisy enthusiasm of the morning was gone, and in its place was weariness and surly dissatisfaction.

Alice and I looked at each other. She gave a long sigh which I took to be relief. But at the same time, there was a look of sickish apprehension in her eyes. I suppose that same look was in mine. Evidently Richard Atlee had managed to elude his hunters, for which I was profoundly grateful. But at the same time we had to face the disquieting fact that he was still alive.

They gathered down by the road again, and from the window we watched Birge give new instructions. Gradually, one by one, we heard engines turning over and we could see cars starting to drive off. This continued until only one car with several of Birge’s fake deputies was left. This car remained behind.

Both the glazier and the exterminator came. They arrived together—a look of bug-eyed disbelief on the glazier’s face as he stared around at the place. It was his second trip out there in a little over a week. They did their work quietly, and as it struck me then, a little nervously, anxious to finish and be gone, as if they were afraid to be caught collaborating with the enemy.

By dusk the door was back on its hinges and glass back in its frame. Most of the windows, too, had been repaired, and the glazier promised somewhat ruefully to be back the following day to finish the job.

Sometime shortly after supper the cars returned. At first Alice thought it was the bunch who’d tried to burn the house down. But it wasn’t. It was Birge’s men. They’d had their dinner and a couple of cans of beer and were rested. Now they were back again with the dogs and torches, their troopers’ hats set at jaunty angles, and thrashing back into the woods.

That night Alice and I lay in bed, sleepless and scarcely breathing, waiting for the sound of a rifle shot.

At one point she said, staring at the ceiling above her, “He’s in that cave, isn’t he?”

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“They’ll never find him, will they?”

“I’d be very much surprised if they did.”

She was silent a moment. “You know where it is?” she asked.

“The cave?”

“Yes.”

“In a general way,” I said after a pause.

“Where is it?”

“Why?”

“Shouldn’t I know?”

“It’s not important.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“It’s not important,” I said again and rolled over, turning my back to her. She was quiet then, but she knew perfectly well why I wouldn’t tell her.

We heard no shot that night.

They were back the next morning quite early. And that night they came back again. On the third day the dissatisfaction of the men deepened into an all-pervasive gloom. You could see it in the weary slump of their shoulders, in the way those once cocked rifles, carried smartly at the port, now dangled limply at their sides, and in the way their boots scuffled and dragged along the dry hard earth. Even the dogs ambled along now with a kind of sleepy disinterest, perking up only at the scent of a raccoon or a flushed partridge.

But down there amid all those drooping spirits, I could see the figure of Birge soaring high above all the rest, ramrod erect and barking orders, his arms cocking here and there like a piston.

I was standing out in the yard watching them file out of the woods and trekking up through the back. This time they took the liberty of crossing our property. At one point Birge passed within five feet of me. He saw me but looked right past me and then trampled deliberately through a bed of prize hybrid tea roses, leaving in his wake a trail of smashed flowers with snapped and lolling necks.

They came for three days and two nights after that, always leaving one car behind when they’d depart. But the third night they left no car. And they didn’t come back.

That afternoon as dusk gathered around us we seemed very much alone. Alice had been quiet all the while Birge’s search had gone on. Now that it was over and they were all gone, she suddenly grew moody and restive.

“He’s going to come back now,” she said.

“Maybe not. Maybe he’s gone.”

“You mean away? Far away?”

“Yes.”

For a moment I thought she was going to cry. “You don’t believe that.”

I tried to read my paper, but she went right on. “Now that they’ve stopped looking, he’s going to come back and move right in and we’ll start all over again. Only this time it’ll be worse.”

I rose wearily and started up the stairs.

“Is that all you can do?” she shouted after me. When I turned and looked at her, her eyes were all watery.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Do something. Anything!”

“You were hoping they’d kill him, weren’t you?” When I said it, it was just as if I’d slapped her. She seemed to shrink back into the shadows. But in the next moment she was composed again.

“Well, what if I was?” she said very softly. “Weren’t you?”

Of course I couldn’t begin to face that question. Even now with several years behind me, I’ve barely been able to look it squarely in the face.

I came back down the steps and put my arm around her shoulder. “Let’s wait and see,” I said. “Maybe he really has gone.”

We waited for a week, and when there was still no sign of his coming back, we started to breathe a bit easier. But the next night at dusk, I finally saw him.

Strange, the way he appeared. Like a deer suddenly wandering out of the forest. He came out by the stone wall and clambered up onto it, standing motionless there in full view staring up at the house. From that distance, if you didn’t know any better, you might have thought it was a piece of garden statuary.

I watched him from the bedroom window while Alice, totally unaware, worked a jigsaw puzzle behind me. I could feel my fingertips growing cold, but I said nothing, merely stared out at him while he stared back at me. Although he couldn’t see me from that distance, I’m absolutely certain he was aware that some one was watching him. It all had a streak of perversity. An act of almost suicidal defiance. He wanted to be seen. No matter what the risks. Then, as suddenly as he’d appeared, he turned and disappeared back into the woods.

He came a second night and a third—always at the same time, dusk, and in the same place on the stone wall. I watched him each time—fascinated and repelled—while Alice still remained unaware of his incredible proximity. He appeared to be taunting me, defying me. It was as if he were saying, “It’s only a matter of time. Then I’m coming back in and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Then the fourth night, Alice finally saw him.

“What are you going to do now?” she said, her face all white and the shrillness edging back into her voice.

“I’m going out to that cave tomorrow.”

She started to protest. I knew what she was going to say, too. She was going to say she had no faith in my word any more or in my ability to correct anything. I knew all that, and I didn’t blame her. I hadn’t been exactly a tower of strength.

But before she could charge me with all this I waved her to silence. “Don’t worry, I promise you he’ll never set foot back in this house.”

The next morning while Alice lay in bed, tense and watchful, I dressed and got ready to set out across the bog.

I said very little to her, only that I expected to be back sometime in the early afternoon. Just as I was about to leave, she said, “Will you please tell me where the cave is?”

“Why?”

“In case anything should happen.”

I looked at her a long moment, knowing exactly what she had in mind.

“Nothing will happen,” I said. “And don’t try to call Birge.”

It was one of those bitter moments that are never forgiven or forgotten no matter how much time passes or how many sweet words or deeds follow.

She reached under my pillow and came up with the pistol. “At least take this.”

“I don’t want that,” I said quite firmly and snatched it from her. I started to put it in the closet, but in the next moment I had a change of heart. I stuffed it in my belt and stormed out.

It was just sun-up when I started out across the woods, full of misgivings about my ability to find the cave. Great rags of mist still clung to the treetops, and the fat black crows that lived in the wood were squawking interminably. It was now late September, and the first leaves of autumn had already drifted down over the spongy sodden earth.

The mist was even thicker in the bog when I finally broke out of the woods. Great gobs of it swirled like gauze all around me, making the job of setting an accurate course even more difficult.

I had at best only a general idea of where the cave was. I knew it was in the northeastern corner of the bog, just where the flats appear to rise into-the scraggly pine-spattered foot-hills. I navigated that morning by the seat of my pants, as they say, turning and twisting by sheer instinct through the high canebrakes and the deep mullein grass tunnels made by the deer moving through there at high speeds.