Hollywood Gothic (5 page)

Below them the snowplow had pushed on almost out of sight, unreeling the road behind it like a slug might leave a wet trail.

“Let’s try again,” Ralph said. He grabbed his lever and with a stone jammed it into what seemed a promising spot. Challis shifted the log. The angle had declined somewhat, so he could apply his weight nearer the end. With the first mighty surge, he felt more give, heard what must have been the tearing away of roots and mud and ice. Again he leaped, pulling down, and again, and again. When it finally came loose, it hung, tottering for a moment: they rushed forward, stepping half into the crater from which it had been dislodged, and pushed, their shoulders against the dirt and mud, and then it went, crashing through the snow, taking trees with it, rolling slowly, implacably, like a medieval juggernaut, smashing and grinding, growing larger gradually. It smashed against a tree, swayed in the low web of fir boughs, then slid off, gathered speed again, now nearly twice the size it had been at birth, and with a swoosh of sound which carried up the hill like an airplane taking off, it hit a stand of medium-sized leafless trees growing on the facing of rock perhaps ten feet above the road. Like grasping fingers the trees seemed to cling, and for a shred of time the roaring sound stopped, the huge ball of snow, trees, mud, ice, branches, hung suspended above the road: then, almost gently, the trees gave way and let the juggernaut drop with a soft thud directly onto the road.

Ralph raised a fist, and Challis hugged him, lifting him off the ground.

“It must have weighed tons by the time it landed,” Challis said. “Took a lot of snow with it … damn near an avalanche.”

On the walk back to the cave, Ralph grew serious. “Why was it we did that? Really.”

“Good question. So they wouldn’t catch us—”

“But they’re trying to
rescue
us, not catch. …”

“Ah, Ralph.” Challis sighed.

“Look, let’s level, see. Did you knock off your wife?” Ralph trudged along, head down, hands in his jacket pockets.

“Nope,” Challis said.

Ralph nodded.

B
ACK AT THE CAVE, CHALLIS
sipped at another cup of coffee while Ralph supervised the cleaning up of the campsite. The demeanor of the children under Ralph’s instructions was amazing; his energy and intelligence were unmistakable. Obviously the boys considered him much the same as an adult leader, yet the fact was he was one of them. It was strange, though Challis would never have called Ralph “normal,” whatever
that
meant, not with Edward G. Robinson always unmistakably close at hand. Normal … Challis reflected on his own state: he hardly saw himself at home among any group of convicted murderers. Perhaps that was the bond between them: neither one was quite what the world believed him to be.

Shortly before noon they were ready to set out. Challis led the way, with Ralph behind him, moving in and out among the boys, helping those who slipped and fell on the ice and snow or who suddenly just got cold and frightened and lonely. Having no idea where they were going, at least not in terms of a destination, Challis moved off up the mountainside. They moved at angles, back and forth among the firs, climbing steadily. Alone, hearing his own labored breathing and from a great distance the occasional chatter of the children, Challis began to think seriously, for the first time since he’d come to in the wreckage, about his own perilous circumstances.

Did he have any real chance to get away? And what did getting away really mean: getting away from the police, but to what? What could he do even if he escaped? How could he get money? Who could he contact for help? How could he get hold of a fake passport if he wanted to leave the country? It wasn’t a movie, and he wasn’t a hero. He was utterly unexceptional in terms of helpful abilities or inside knowledge, in terms of bravery or stealth or cunning or contacts. … Solomon Roth? Could he go to Sol? And how much did the matter of a conviction make to a friend? And who were his friends, really—the kind of friends who would risk aiding a convicted murderer?

The quality of his freedom was pretty poor. He was loose, like an animal escaped from a zoo, but he was hardly free. A real escapee—says Humphrey Bogart in
Dark Passage
—had a better chance. Lauren Bacall had picked him up, intentionally, because she sympathized and understood his plight. He shook his head, trying to erase all the images which flooded his mind the more he thought: they were fiction. The people in the images shut down for the day and left the Warner lot, or Columbia, or RKO, and went the hell back to Holmby Hills or the terraced hillsides of Bel Air to sip their martinis and thumb through the next day’s pages. He was Toby Challis, out of breath and frightened, undoubtedly lost, with only a fat kid with a backpack to see him through another night, and nobody was going home at five o’clock.

They reached the top of the mountain in the early afternoon. Unexpectedly, there they were, having labored upward through a low-slung cloud. Ahead of them, surrounded by the stubby wooded peaks, was a gray circle of water, a small lake. Snow seemed to hang above it, and foggy clouds slid past on the wind. He couldn’t imagine how far away it was: a mile or three or ten, he had no experience in such matters. Together they sat down on dead limbs and snowy rocks, stared out at the lake. The snow rattled on their parkas. Challis squinted hard at the lake and the shoreline. He shook his head, feeling the snow cake crack on his beard. His teeth were chattering. He tugged his raincoat tighter. It was a mess.

“Ralph, take a close look out there.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Some sign of life,” he said. “I can’t see anything … are there any lodges over there, near the lake? There ought to be, houses or lodges, and they ought to be empty in this kind of weather. If we’re going to go in that direction, we might as well find a house. It’ll take the rest of the daylight to get there.”

It was pathetic. That was the only plan he had, simply finding shelter, getting in out of the storm. Maybe then he could settle down and do some thinking. Maybe. …

“There’s a place over there,” Ralph said. “At the end of the lake … the right end. Unstrap the pocket side of my backpack—there’s Zeiss field glasses in there, little collapsible ones.” He grinned. “My folks worry so much that I’m crazy maybe, they get me all sorts of stuff. There’s a bright side to everything, see?”

Challis found the binoculars, peered at the right end of the lake. Half-hidden among the trees there was a weather-beaten grayish building. He couldn’t make out any more about it, wondered at Ralph’s being able to see it at all. He looked around the rest of visible shoreline, saw nothing that looked like a dwelling to him, and put the binoculars back in Ralph’s pack.

“Okay, I guess that’s it,” he said. He gathered the group around him and told them where they were headed, how long it might take. “It’s not going to be easy, men,” he said. “But it’s our only hope.” He was sure he’d written those lines for a television show a long time ago. “Are you with me?” He looked down at Stevie, the youngest, or at least the smallest. “Are you with me, pal?”

“Sure, Bandersnatch,” Stevie said. “All the way.”

The afternoon was endless. The glow behind the snow and clouds dropped past the mountaintops about three o’clock, and it kept getting darker and colder. The snow came and went, the wind never let up. They pushed on, sinking through frozen snowcrust at one point, slogging through wet muddiness at another. The children trudged along without complaint. For a time they got Ralph to recite the Lewis Carroll poem, which they chimed in on at crucial moments. Ralph passed out the last of his candy bars. Challis developed a headache, and his cut, bruised leg began to give him some trouble. He got tired. The sky began to go dark, but even after dark they could see: the clouds were thinning. The snow still was driven on the wind, but more and more it was blowing off the ground, whipping at their legs and guts and faces, but not coming from above.

By seven o’clock, having rested frequently as they went, they were close enough to see the building in the moonlight. Close enough to reach the flat road tracing its way around the lake. By seven-thirty they were standing outside the house, which was a timbered affair, two stories at one end, a single story at the other. A long balcony/deck faced out toward the lake, and the branches of the firs scraped the roof and sides here and there. The wind whistled across the lake, blowing snow like ghosts sliding over the thin ice.

The house was dark, curtains drawn.

Leaning away from the wind, they went along the side of what must have been the garage and then along the back, where they were out of the gale and the moon made the snow sparkle icily. Challis tried the door that gave onto the patio. To his considerable surprise, the door opened. He peered inside, saw nothing in the darkness. “We’re in luck,” he said. “Now, be very quiet, come in, and just stand still.” He waited while they went inside. He was now guilty, quite possibly, of obstructing officers in the pursuit of their duty, causing a landslide, kidnapping the children, and trespassing, if not actually committing forcible entry. It had been a full day.

Breathless, they stood in the kitchen, waiting. Challis eased the door shut. Once the shuffling and sniffling and panting had died down, he thought he heard something—music, soft and turned low, but it was music. Or was it inside his head? The wind whined outside, scraped at the windows. He led the procession toward the kitchen doorway, down a hallway, then suddenly around a corner into a high, two-storied room with vaulted ceiling and a living room sunken three steps. In the far wall, a gigantic, walk-in-sized fireplace dwarfed a small, flickering log fire. Two squat table lamps cast a dim glow over a topography of low, soft-looking gray couches and darkly shining butcher block coffee tables. The music was indeed coming from speakers artfully concealed among the plants and dark wood. He looked at Ralph, who shrugged. “Somebody’s home,” Ralph said. “Where are they?” Challis tried to think, his mind and body worn out. He looked at the kids. They stood quietly, wiping their noses, yawning, waiting.

“Whoever you are”—the woman’s voice came from above, low and sarcastic, a deep, almost hoarse voice—“I’ve never seen a drearier bunch.”

A balcony ran around three walls, and she was standing against the glow from a doorway behind her. She wore a long white terry-cloth robe, a towel wrapped around her hair, and was leaning forward, both hands on the railing, looking down at them, watching calmly.

“Ah,” Challis said, nodding. “We are that. Dreary, tired, hungry, orphans of the storm … lost campers.” He concluded his remarks lamely.

“Not, perhaps, the best possible day for camping out,” she said. “Still, here you are. Turn on some lights, get out of your coats, and get warm by the fire. I’ll be down in a minute.”

Challis couldn’t make out her features, and then she was gone. The deep voice, the taint of sarcasm, made him feel safe. A calm, laid-back lady, thank God. He wished he knew what to say to her. He wished he knew what the hell he was doing. He wondered if she’d been listening to the radio. What a time for a cute meet. …

The boys clustered around the fire. Stevie was already half-asleep. Someone else was trying vainly to recite “Jabberwocky,” and the group generally had had the starch taken out of them. Challis pitched another log onto the fire and dropped onto a couch. Exhaustion hit him like a mailed fist. “I’m hungry,” Stevie said, his eyes heavy, barely open. “Me, too,” someone said from the floor. Challis nodded. “Just hang on.”

She came down eventually, still in the robe, her darkish blond hair dried, hanging straight to her jawline, bare feet flickering beneath the terry cloth. She stood at the top of the three stairs, looking at them, shaking her head. “My God,” she groaned. “Are you all right? Hungry. But, first, is anybody hurt? Banged up? Anything?”

“Just hungry, see,” Ralph said. “Tired and hungry, see.”

“Meet Edward G. Robinson,” Challis said.

“Johnnie Rocco,” the woman corrected him.

“Right on,” Ralph said, grinning.

“Okay,” she said. “Food first, and we’ll get to know each other later.” She turned to Challis: “Can you make it up the steps, soldier?” He nodded. “Why don’t you herd the lads upstairs. There are two bathrooms, a shower in each one, lots of great big towels, get everybody cleaned up … they’ll sleep better clean.” She smiled at him, them. She had pale green eyes, even white teeth that had been capped. An actress? But her face meant nothing to him. Tall, in those indeterminate late thirties. Her face was tan for somebody with her hair color, faint lines around her mouth and the corners of her eyes. She regarded him levelly: “Earth to scoutmaster … still with us?” The kids, somewhat recovered, were staggering loudly up the stairs, reverting to kids’ racket now that they were safe.

“Barely,” he said.

“I’ll get going in the kitchen.” She watched him. “Go on,” she coaxed, “the first step’s always the hardest.”

Cute meet, he reflected again, as he got the showers going. The steam felt good and it was a relief to hear the exuberant sounds, smell the soap. He dumped all the dirty clothes into a wicker clothes hamper. In the mirror he regarded his own face, reddened across the cheekbones, his beard matted, hair blown and sweaty, lips cracked from the cold and wind. The cut on his knee was scabbed over and the knee was stiffening. His nose was windburned, peeling. His back ached, his neck was stiff, his left arm was bruised, all reminders of the plane crash. Drenched in self-pity, he decided to postpone his shower until the boys were fed and asleep. A little while longer couldn’t make any difference.

Gathered around the kitchen table, they ate peanut-butter sandwiches and bowls of tomato soup. The woman kept the toast coming for the sandwiches, kept the soup bowls full. Challis felt like one of the towel-wrapped kids. While they slacked off, their bellies filling comfortably, she sorted the dirty clothing and started the first washer load. He finished his soup, watched her.

“Time for bed,” she said. “Rinse your dishes and just stack them on the counter.” They did as they were told. Then she led them into a room with a bar, a television set, three more couches arranged around an empty fireplace, bookcases, and a pool table. She showed them how the couches opened out into beds and let them finish the job. She handed around several blankets, showed them where the bathroom was, and told them it was okay to leave a table lamp burning if they wanted to. Ralph was the last one in bed. He looked up at Challis. “ ’Night, Bandersnatch.” He winked.