In the Night Season (24 page)

H
E WAS BEING CARRIED, HEAD
down, by the waist. He saw the ground moving below, only inches from his eyes. This was Bags carrying him, and he would die soon. It would be death. He would find out what it was, and he had the thought as if the dying were simply the next thing in his life. It raked through him that this was the thing itself, happening, and there wouldn’t be any time, no person to look back on it and call it a name. His mind sped. Everything throbbed. He tried to look up, but his neck and shoulders cramped, and then he seemed to drift again, all the blood having rushed to his head. It pounded in his ears, and something lifted him so that he could see that his bleeding hand dangled before him, that it had struck the ground and was hurting again. He held it in front of his eyes and looked at it—a bad slash across the palm, and another bleeding cut on the back of the wrist. His head hurt. He was sick to his stomach.

And then he remembered, with a surge of hopeless excitement, that he had seen his father. He tried again to look up. “Dad?” he said.

He couldn’t see. The ground went by his face and then became concrete. He saw drops of blood there. He was being let down, his feet came in contact with the ground. He tried to stand, but his legs
gave way—the sprained ankle, and the cut, too, now. Whoever it was held him up and carried him through a doorway into the kitchen of the unfinished house. He was pulled to a chair and seated in it, and when he looked up again into the light from the windows he saw his father. “Dad?” he said. The face rearranged itself.

Reuther.

Jason started to let down inside, and sound issued from him that sounded like a combination of crying and laughing, a hysterical nerve-tic, which he sought to control and couldn’t. He simply let it go, staring at Reuther there, who had put his hands on his hips and tilted his head to one side, curious, frowning.

“I don’t think you quite understand the situation,” Reuther said.

He couldn’t answer.

The other took him by the shoulder and shook him. “Listen to me.”

It went on. He saw, out of the corner of one eye, the fat man move past the space of the open door.

Reuther clapped a hand brutally over the boy’s mouth. It closed off his air. He sucked in, receiving the odor of the hand, a sick, dirty human smell of sweat and skin and something like wet paper bags. He coughed. Something hot rose in his throat, to his mouth; he leaned forward, out of Reuther’s grasp, and spit onto the floor.

Reuther cursed, turning from him. He ran water in the sink, then came back and put a cold rag across the boy’s mouth, over his eyes. He held the boy’s head in a tight, painful grip, roughly abrading his skin with the rag. Then he stepped back, using the cloth to wipe his own hands. “Now,” he said.

“He was going to throw me in the basement,” Jason said.

“Was he.”

“He would’ve murdered me.”

“Shit.” Reuther threw the rag into the sink and crossed the room, working his hands in front of him. “I’m so lucky in my choice of fucking partners, aren’t I?”

“I didn’t mean to run away,” Jason said. “Please don’t let him hurt my mother.”

“You’re a pretty brave fellow,” Reuther said. He had the light from the window behind him; you couldn’t quite distinguish the features of his face.

The boy tried to see the room, and it spun with the motion of his head. Reuther reached for him, supported him in the chair.

“You’re a little weak.”

“Yes.” He heard the note of gratitude in his own voice. The fat man was outside somewhere, and Jason groped for some sense of hope from this fact.

“You’ve lost a little blood.”

“I was afraid of the basement,” Jason said, fighting tears. “I didn’t mean anything.”

Reuther knelt down and tore a piece of the boy’s shirttail. The sudden sound made him yell.

“Take it easy. Nobody’s hurting you now.”

Reuther applied the torn piece of cloth to the wounds on Jason’s hand. Jason saw the smooth flesh of his face, the little pores where whiskers grew, the mark just under the right eye, like a small chicken pox scar. The eyes were such a cold, watery blue. “It’s stopped mostly,” Reuther said.

“He tried to kill me.”

“Yes. Of course. Mr. Bags is a very brutal, bad man. And the thing that compounds it of course is that he’s also quite stupid.” There was the smallest grain of sympathy in the soft, German-accented voice; it brought all the boy’s grief flooding toward the surface again. He couldn’t stop sniffling. “I was only defending myself.”

“You’re a brave fellow, as I said.” Reuther smiled. “Now, I’m afraid I have to tie you up again.” He brought the rope out of his coat and tied the boy’s hands to the back of the chair. He tightened the knots, working swiftly, and here was Bags, coming in from the outside, carrying a leather backpack by the loop handle at the top.

“Put it on the counter,” Reuther said, still working.

Bags did so, never taking his eyes from the boy, a grin of satisfaction and triumph on his face. His eyes were murderous. A bruise had risen in the slack flesh of the left cheek. He reached into the bag
and brought out two wrapped sandwiches. Opening one, he began to eat, making a lot of noise, still staring at the boy.

Reuther took the other sandwich for himself. He faced Jason. “Hungry?”

The boy couldn’t speak.

“Guess not.”

“I’m gonna have some fun when this is all over,” Bags said, chewing, nodding at Jason. He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. “Yessir.”

Reuther spoke. “Try to comprehend what’s at stake here, hmm?”

Jason couldn’t tell who this was addressed to. Reuther strolled to the other side of the room and leaned against the wall, eating his sandwich.

“I’m just saying,” said Bags. He took part of the knife handle out of his belt as if to show it to the boy. “Some fun.”

“Go outside, please,” Reuther told him.

“There ain’t nothing to watch for.”

“Your brother is not much brighter than you are, and therefore anything might happen. But mostly I’d rather not have you here.”

For a long time, Bags didn’t move. He stood there eating the last of his sandwich. The two men seemed to be waiting for whatever might happen next. Bags reached into the backpack and brought out a can of V—8 juice. He opened it and drank it down, then crushed the can and tossed it across the room, so that it clattered against the baseboard and rolled back a few feet. The noise of it made the boy jump.

Bags smiled, regarding him with the cold passive sureness of a killer. “The little hero’s feeling kind of jumpy.”

“Go outside,” Reuther told him. “Now.”

Again, Bags waited.

The other gazed passively at him.

“This ain’t no Third Reich, you know.”

“Just do as I say,” Reuther told him. “And maybe you’ll get to be a rich man.”

Bags turned to the boy. “Some fun,” he said and went out, closing the door, slowly, behind him.

Reuther cleared his throat and took another bite of the sandwich. Jason kept his eyes on him, though he was aware of the door, with the fat man standing in the window, hands on hips.

“Sure you don’t want something to eat?”

He shook his head.

“You should keep your strength up.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Reuther pulled another chair up and turned it around, straddling it to face him. For a few moments, he just sat there, as if waiting for his captor to speak. “What is the strangest thing that happened between you and your father?”

Jason was silent.

“Can you think of anything?”

“No.”

“There has to be something—some inexplicable thing. He punished you once, say, and you didn’t deserve it.”

The boy shook his head.

“You feel you always deserved it.”

Again, he was silent.

“You were close?”

“Travis already asked me all this,” he said.

Reuther reached over and cuffed him on the side of the face; it stung. The ends of his long fingers were hard and rough. “Did that shake loose any thoughts?”

The boy glared. He was dizzy. It had been a small slap, with only the weight of the hand coming across his cheek; yet he couldn’t seem to get his breath. His throat hurt. But his mind was made up: he would not speak now, no matter what Reuther did or said.

“Did he ever hit you?”

Jason blinked, waiting for the blow.

“Did he ever hit you?”

He commenced crying once more. He put his head down and fought it and was aware that the other had stood. Reuther moved the chair to the other side of the room, then came back.

“I wish life were not so hard for all of us,” he said.

I
N FRONT OF HIS DAUGHTER’S SCHOOL
, Shaw waited behind a blue van, into which several black children were climbing. A big woman stood holding the door for them. She had dreadlocks and looked to be pregnant. One of the children, a little girl, reached up to her face and offered a kiss. The woman smiled and bent down to take the kiss. Then she glanced at Shaw sitting in his idling car behind the van. He tried to signal that he was in no hurry, but she took it wrong, lifted the little girl in and closed the door, then walked around to the driver’s side with an expression of tolerant dislike on her face. He smiled at her, held one hand up to wave. She shook her head, not quite seeing his friendly wave, got into the van, and slammed the door. Shaw watched the van pull away.

Every day had its portion of misunderstandings. And everybody seemed to be spoiling for a fight. He suppressed the urge to think about the first peaceful feeling after a drink. It kept coming at him now, an increasing pressure.

Mary waited for him on a little wooden bench outside the door, and when she saw him she fumbled with her book bag, putting it over her shoulder while trying to arrange a large piece of poster board under one arm. She had other books too, and she dropped
one, attempting to cradle everything in the arm that held the poster board. He left the car and hurried over.

“Here,” he said. “Let me help.”

“I’ve got it,” she said. And she did. He walked with her to the car and opened the door for her. She wore a dark blue dress, which hung below the level of her winter coat, and her wool cap appeared about to slide off the side of her head. Her movements were very sure and graceful, for all the difficulty she was having. She dropped everything in a clattering heap in back, then settled on the front seat and folded her hands in her lap, reaching up to straighten her cap. He fastened the seat belt over her and closed the door. Someone waited behind him—a young woman in an idling Volkswagen Beetle, looking very impatient. He nodded at her and she gave no response. “All right,” he muttered under his breath, as he edged in behind the wheel.

“What?” Mary said.

“You say, ‘Pardon,’” he told her.

“Mom says that’s for company,” she said.

He decided to change the subject. “So, how’s it feel to be a champion?”

This pleased her. “Oh, Daddy.”

“Must be nice,” he said. “I’ve never been the champion of anything.”

She stared out at the countryside. He thought of being that age and having the house you live in come apart. She was a bright, good-natured girl, with pretty brown eyes and light brown hair, the healthy shine of which caused subtle changes in his heartbeat. He had always been shy with her, always felt the ways he had failed her, and it had been all the more difficult now that he was living in other rooms, away.

“What’re you thinking about, darling?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Are you okay?”

“You mean am I happy that I won?”

“Well, all right.”

“I’m happy I won,” she said. “But that isn’t what you meant.”

“No?”

“It isn’t, is it?”

“No.”

“So tell me.”

“I meant—just—generally. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said simply. “My horoscope for today said I would meet a new friend and that I would succeed at something I wanted to do.”

“Since when are you a person who thinks about horoscopes?”

“Since always.”

“Really.”

“Mom and I have been reading them every morning. And you know they’re true a lot of the time. It’s amazing.”

“They’re general. So they
seem
true.”

“No, really,” she said. “The one yesterday said we were going to move. It was right there in black and white.”

“But it only
seems
that way, Mary, because it’s written to sound like it. It’s written in such a way that you can—interpret it any way you want to. It’s like an optical illusion.”

“It is not.” Her voice was definite. He heard the voice of his wife. “I saw it. A move is imminent. That’s what it said. And I can spell the word. I know what it means.”

He attempted to change the subject: “Listen—honey—about the move—”

“What?”

“You’re not afraid or anything—I mean it’s not making you worry—”

Her smile was tolerant. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well,” he said. “I guess it’s a silly question.”

She reached into her book bag and moved things around. “I have my medal in here somewhere.”

“Are you all set for the move?”

She stopped, but left her hands inside the bag. “I guess.”

“It’ll be all right,” he told her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “What will be all right?”

“Everything.”

“Of course it will.”

“Well, that’s all I meant.”

She gave a little nod, then sat forward and looked out at the road. He attended to her out of the corner of his eye, taking the turn down Highway 29, toward Steel Run Creek. A little girl with a looming change on her mind, trying to keep from thinking about it too much. Believing horoscopes. And he had not been able to keep from hectoring her about it. He knew from her mother that she was afraid of the move.

“I’m gonna come see you so often you’ll get tired of me,” he said.

“No you won’t,” she said simply.

It occurred to him that children don’t like being lied to any more than adults do. He said, “We’ll spend whole weekends together.”

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t you believe me?”

“I believe you.”

There seemed nothing else to say. He watched the road. Not two hours ago he had been in a room where a murdered man lay. He worked to put this far from his thoughts. He saw an image of the bloody shoe print along the baseboard of the Bishop house and glanced over at his daughter, as if there were some possibility that the image might’ve got out of him and found its way into the flow of her mind. It struck him with a different kind of force that in all likelihood there was a child out there carrying that image, too. Whose child?

“Daddy,” she said, without looking at him.

“Yes?”

“I’ve been thinking how old Willy would be now.”

This sent a pulse through him, fright and sorrow in the same shivering instant. He kept his eyes on the road. “Honey, what made you think about Willy?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been trying to think what he might look like grown up into a teenager. Mom was looking at his
pictures when we were packing some things. I don’t remember him.”

“No,” he said, through the constriction of his throat. “But you would’ve liked him. You would’ve liked him fine.”

They had reached the house. Carol was out on the lawn, her coat pulled tight at the collar, talking to a man who stood out of the open door of a panel truck. The man had a ponytail down his back and a scraggly, long, pointed beard. The side of the panel truck was emblazoned with a white horse in midgallop. The red letters below this read
WHITE STALLION MOVERS
.

Mary got out of the car and marched toward the front door, head down. Carol said something to the man and then stepped over to greet her. The man looked at Shaw, who could see that his arrival was troubling him—it was as if Shaw could read the other man’s natural inclination to be wary around police. He was probably a nice character, though he looked like the sort who was still trying to live out the sixties: all those young men dressed in the style of 1968, as if time had stood still. The man waved at him, and he returned the gesture.

“Thank you,” Carol said.

The man got into the van and backed out. Carol put her hand on Mary’s shoulder—what was it about all her gestures now that seemed protective, as though she might have to shield the child from her own father?—and waited there as Shaw got out of the car and approached.

“That was a mover,” she said.

“I saw. You don’t have to explain anything.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry, Carol.”

“You look a little the worse for the wear,” she said.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Does it have to be now, Phil?”

He turned to Mary. “Honey, go on inside a minute. Mommy’ll be right in.”

Mary kissed the side of his face—just the sort of unbidden, thoughtless affection from her that could haunt him through the
sleepless hours—and went on to the house. At the door, she smiled at him, then turned and was gone.

“Okay,” Carol said, all business.

“Carol, what’re you doing reading horoscopes to her?”

She glowered. “Is that what this is about?”

“I just want to know. She thinks they’re true. You know she takes them seriously?”

“So do I take them seriously.”

“Are you drinking, Carol?”

“No. You?” Her gaze was a challenge.

“No.”

“I didn’t know reading horoscopes qualified a person for AA,” she said. “I’ve always taken them seriously.”

“Since when?”

“Since none of your business. Okay? You never noticed it because you never noticed anything.”

“I noticed plenty. For Christ’s sake, Carol. Horoscopes.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to say?”

“If you weren’t causing damage, you know, you’d be funny.”

“Damage?” she said. “Really?”

“All right. That’s enough.”

“No—you said damage. How am I doing damage?”

“Maybe that’s not the word,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Phil.”

“Wait.”

“Do you just want to make trouble? Is that it?”

“All right,” he said. “This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about—”

“You got it in, though, didn’t you?”

“I can’t help it. I can’t help feeling a little bad about the fact that you’re teaching her that crap. That’s my daughter, too, and there ought to be some agreements between us about this kind of thing. What the hell’s going to be next, Carol? Spaceships behind the fucking celestial bodies?”

“Watch your language, please. I think she’s heard enough aggression for one day.”

“Aggression. Everything’s aggression with you. Disagreeing with you is aggression. Tell me, what
isn’t
aggression?”

“I’m going inside. I don’t need this shit.”

“This
is
your shit, Carol. I’m just repeating it back to you.”

She said, “You don’t call this aggression?”

He glanced at the house and saw Mary watching them from an upstairs window. He said, “Look, I don’t want a fight.”

“Oh, really.” She started to move away from him.

“No—Christ—wait a minute,” he said. “Carol. I’m sorry. Jesus. I really don’t want a fight. I didn’t come here to argue with you.”

“You could’ve fooled me.” She crossed her arms and turned partly away from him.

“Carol, can’t we agree on some of the so-called curriculum?”

“So, okay—and what do we do? We agree that she learns only what
you
want her to learn? We read horoscopes together in the mornings. For fun. Is there something
else
you wanted to tell me?”

He shifted a little. The anger moved through him. “Yes,” he said.

She waited.

“Mary said she’s been thinking about Willy a lot.”

“We both have. We’re leaving here. I had some of the pictures out—” She halted. For a time neither of them could speak.

Shaw felt, as he had so many times over the past month, the bitter strangeness of being here with this woman, so removed from him now, though she was close enough to touch. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, and there was a chilly wind blowing, but this motion was not, he knew, quite exactly connected to the cold. She seemed to be remembering everything, all the hurtful, sad, hard ways in which her own life was so painfully bound to his. It was in her brimming eyes, and the way she edged away, putting the smallest distance between them. He almost embraced her.

“Carol.”

“No,” she said. “What did you want to tell me about it?”

“Nothing,” he got out. “Just wanted to be sure you knew.”

“Well, I know.”

There was a pause, during which she did not look at him. The wind pulled the hair across her face, and she faced into it.

“Don’t let Mary out of your sight over the next few days, okay? And keep the doors locked and the alarm on.”

She drew in a breath to speak, then evidently realized the import of the first part of his speech. Her whole expression changed. “Is this that Virginia Front business? I heard it on the radio. It’s a hate crime. We don’t fit the bill, you know?”

“Yeah, well—it’s not so sure it was a hate crime. There’s something weird going on, so keep a close watch on her, that’s all.” He pointed. “The Bishop house is
right
over that hill.”

“I know that.” She had drawn up slightly, her arms still folded.

“Okay,” he said.

“I don’t let her wander around unsupervised, Phil.”

He chose to ignore this; it was probably, he decided, unintentional. “I didn’t say you do.”

“And I didn’t mean anything by that,” she told him.

“Okay,” he said.

“But I
don’t
leave her unattended.”

The emphasized word grated on him. He started to move off.

“I’m glad we’re leaving Steel Run.”

He spoke over his shoulder. “Lock the doors. I’ll try and check in later if you want.”

“Could you?” There was actually a note of pleading in her voice.

It struck him as ironic. He nearly said so. It took all his self-possession to remain silent. He got to the car and turned to face her. She was standing there clutching the collar of her coat. “Of course I will,” he said.

The night Carol announced that she wanted him out of her life, he went into a bar in Steel Run and nearly got himself into a fight with a pair of marines on their way to Quantico. The marines carried him forcibly out to the parking lot and left him sitting in the backseat of a ’78 Mercury convertible. They told him they understood his anger; he seemed to recall the sound of their laughter as they walked away. He came to in sunlight, wondering why the owner of the Mercury hadn’t come out of the bar. No one was around to answer this for him. It was a blazing hot July day, and he walked
around the establishment, in weeds and scattered piles of litter, seeking to know. He was in a daze; the sun blinded him and seemed to be cooking the oxygen out of the air. Finally, he went to his own car and drove home. Carol had taken Mary to a summer program at the community college and was packing Shaw’s clothes into a suitcase. She wanted him to move out right away, and she wanted him to know that her decision to end the marriage was not necessarily for any specific reason having to do with the past, or with his nature—after all, she understood the alcohol problem, having suffered with that herself. She desired freedom from him.