The Truth of the Matter (7 page)

“It’s beautiful in this part of the country,” she said, “all rolling and wild.”

“Ever been through here in the fall?” Roebuck asked, watching the highway. “There’s every color you can imagine in those woods. I was here some time ago on a hunting trip.”

“Do you like to hunt?”

“I’ve hunted everything from squirrel to lion.”

They lapsed into silence, a silent with which Roebuck could be completely at ease. Ellie worked that way on him sometime, soothing him. Perhaps it was his complete and uncompromising mastery over her, and her complete loyalty. Here was a woman who could be trusted, Roebuck thought, and he had not thought that about many women. Maybe that was the reason she inspired a certain degree of confession in him.

“I was born near here,” Roebuck said, “Arkansas. But it’s not like it is here, not this pretty or this hot.”

“Do you have those weeping willow trees there?” Ellie pointed to a roadside grove of the huge, graceful trees.

“Some.”

“There’s no prettier tree than a weeping willow,” Ellie said, “or sadder, the way they thirst for moisture and grow all turned down instead of up.”

Roebuck nodded. “You usually find them around septic tanks.” He concentrated on his driving for a while. “We’re going to have to steal another car sometime soon.”

“It sure is less trouble to steal a car than I thought.”

“You bet it is,” Roebuck said with a tight grin. “People are fools.”

Ellie sighed. “I hope the police are fools.”

“They are,” he assured her.

“How come we don’t travel at night, Lou?”

Roebuck crooked his arm and rested it on the ledge of the open car window, flattening his bicep against the warm metal of the door as a group of young motorcyclists flashed by going in the other direction. “Less conspicuous during the day,” he said. “There are fewer cars on the road at night and you can see their lights for miles. Besides, the police might be expecting me to travel by night. I told you they were mostly fools. In Intelligence it was all we could do to keep them from botching up our work when they were trying to help.”

A brightly lettered restaurant sign, crying for their attention with a command to
STOP AND EAT,
appeared in the distance alongside the highway, and Roebuck slowed the car. “What about some supper?”

“If you want to stop, Lou.”

“We have to eat soon,” Roebuck said, “and that little place only has a few cars on the lot.”

“I suppose we could use a good meal,” Ellie agreed. “And try not to be so nervous, Lou.”

There was only one other customer in the small diner. They chose a booth in the far corner away from the counter and grill, a secluded corner near a plate glass window. Roebuck studiously avoided looking at the dead moths on the long metal sill as he and Ellie slid into the booth.

“Help you folks?” It was the cook who had been standing behind the counter when they entered, a fat, greasy man in a white shirt and apron. He placed two glasses of water on the booth table.

“What’s good?” Ellie asked.

“Everything,” the man answered flatly. He held a broken pencil poised over his order tablet. “Special’s the best, and it’s all cooked up. Roast beef and gravy.”

“That’ll be good,” Roebuck said. “And two coffees.”

The fat man made a quick notation on his tablet and moved off.

“No need to keep looking out the window,” Ellie said. “We’re safe here.”

Roebuck smiled at her. He knew she represented the transition in his image from a hard-pressed fugitive to an average family man on the road with his wife. Of course, that was the image seen by the outsider. He knew he was a fugitive, and so did Ellie.

“There’s something I’d like to tell you,” Roebuck said confidentially.

Ellie waited, revolving her glass slowly in the spreading ring of water it left on the table.

“My real name’s not Lou Watson, it’s Lou Roebuck.”

She looked up at him, her eyes unreadable.

“The seawater story, that wasn’t true either. It was to test you, to see if I could
really
trust you.”

“And can you?”

“I can,” Roebuck said. “That’s why I’ve decided to tell you the truth, the absolute truth.”

“I don’t know if there is such a thing, Lou.”

“Roast beef, folks.” The fat man waddled toward them with two platters of beef and mashed potatoes covered with gravy. He set a plate before each of them. “You came to the right spot, folks. Finest eating this side of the Mississip!”

“Thanks,” Roebuck said, watching the bulging retreating back.

“Then you aren’t really a wanted man?” Ellie asked.

“I am,” Roebuck said, “and I want to tell you how it happened.”

The one other customer left, an old man who’d been sitting at the counter. “See you, Ab!” the fat man called. Ab raised a feeble hand and went out into the greater heat beyond the door.

“It started during the war,” Roebuck said seriously, “when I was just a kid, in the Battle of the Bulge. Old Jerry took us by surprise and we knew we had a battle on our hands. It was fight and fall back. Some of the finest men I ever knew died there.

“I was a sergeant, despite my age, the leader of a platoon that was ordered to fight a rear action because we were seasoned troops. We were dug in along a shallow dry drainage ditch when the Germans came. All of a sudden they opened up with a machine gun, killing one of my men and wounding another. We had to knock out that machine gun!”

“Here’s your coffee, folks.” The fat man had returned. “Traveling far?”

“To California,” Roebuck said, irritated. He waited in icy silence until the fat man had walked back behind the counter out of hearing range.

“We could hear the clank of tank treads in the distance,” Roebuck went on, “a terrible sound. Something had to be done about the machine gun right away, and I didn’t want to ask any of my men…so I did it myself. I cut down along the ditch, doubled back and threw a grenade. I had to shoot one of the Germans with my service revolver and strangle another. Then I turned the machine gun on the German tank. It was—”

“You folks ought’a stop off down the highway and see the Crazy House,” the fat man called from behind the counter. “It’s an anti-gravity place. Balls roll uphill, water don’t set right in a glass. Only cost you fifty cents.”

“We might just do that,” Ellie said with a forced smile.

“You can’t knock out a tank with a machine gun,” Roebuck said tightly. “But it was all I had. Shells were whistling over my head and dirt was kicking up all around me. I kept firing, and I held back the tank long enough for the rest of the men to come up and knock it out with a bazooka.”

“Fifty cents ain’t much,” the fat man said loudly. “Not these days.”

Roebuck turned in his seat and looked at him intensely with pure hate. “No,” he said slowly, with finality, “not much at all.” He continued to stare at the fat man until the man turned his back and began scraping the grill.

“Then all hell broke loose,” Roebuck said, looking again at Ellie. “There were krauts everywhere. We had to fall back to where we’d been dug in and make a stand. A man named Ingrahm, one of my best friends, was hit in the head and fell next to me. I grabbed him under the arms and dragged him back with me. We passed another man, named Ben Gipp. Private Gipp had been hit and was on his back, pleading with me to take him because he couldn’t move. But hell, Ingrahm couldn’t move either. He was unconscious, and I already had him so I kept dragging him right on past Gipp through that hail of bullets to the cover of the drainage ditch.

“The Germans pinned us down there, and they used Gipp for bait. He kept calling to us to help him, but there was no way. I called the colonel on the walkie-talkie, and he ordered us to leave Gipp to be taken prisoner if we had to.

“We stayed there until nightfall, then I pulled the men out under cover of darkness. That was the last I saw of Private Gipp for the rest of the war.” Roebuck frowned. “It was the hardest decision I ever had to make.”

“You folks like Otis Birdly?” The fat man behind the counter turned a radio on very loud to some twanging country music. “He’s better than them Rollin’ Rocks!”

“Ingrahm survived,” Roebuck persisted in a slightly louder voice, “but the doctors had to put a plate in his head.”

Tires squealed outside and Roebuck jumped and looked out the window. It wasn’t a police car, but two girls in a red convertible speeding out of the closed and abandoned gas station across the highway.

His jaw quaking, Roebuck glared at the fat man. “Why don’t you turn that damn radio off?”

The fat man did, then very slowly he untied the strings of his white apron and started to come out from behind the counter.

Ellie touched the back of Roebuck’s hand. “We can’t have trouble that might bring the police, Lou,” she said softly.

Trouble was the last thing Roebuck wanted as he saw the huge bulk of the man approach them. He was one of those sharp-eyed fat men whom Roebuck instinctively disliked and feared. How could you not fear such hunger peering at you from the folds of such mountainous fat?

“The roast beef wasn’t tender enough for you?” the fat man asked menacingly, hovering over Roebuck.

Roebuck swallowed, aware of Ellie watching him. By God, he wouldn’t let himself be bluffed out!

“Couldn’t stick a fork in the gravy,” he said with a quaver in his voice.

The fat man backed up a step. “You ain’t talkin’ to no short-order cook,” he said. “You’re talkin’ to the owner of this place.”

Roebuck waited for him to say more, but he obviously wasn’t going to.

“So?” Roebuck said.

“So I’m tellin’ you to get out of here, and that’ll be three ten for the specials.”

Roebuck tried to finish his coffee slowly and deliberately, but his hand trembled and some of the warm liquid spilled onto his shirt front. He and Ellie stood and he placed three one-dollar bills and a dime on the table.

“I hope you didn’t expect a tip,” he said sharply as they walked out.

They got into the car and Roebuck started the engine. “Hah!” he said. “He forgot to charge us for the coffee.”

Ellie glanced toward the diner. “I’m just glad you didn’t let him make any trouble.”

“I was measuring him,” Roebuck said coolly. “Under ordinary circumstances I’d have half killed him.” He put the car in gear with a practiced flip of his hand.

“He didn’t seem very afraid of you,” Ellie said.

“They weren’t afraid at Hiroshima, either,” Roebuck answered, “then all of a sudden they were gone.”

Ellie looked straight ahead as they sped down the highway. “Lou, I want you to know it doesn’t matter if you lied to me the first time.”

“I have faith in you now,” Roebuck said. “That’s why I want to tell you the truth about Ingrahm and Gipp, about the murder charge.”

“Then you
are
wanted for murder?’

“It wasn’t murder,” Roebuck said quickly. “It was an accident.” He swung into the outer lane to pass a station wagon loaded down with children. “You see, Gipp was taken prisoner and then released, and somehow he and Ingrahm became friends after the war. I saw them a couple of times, and I could tell that Gipp never forgave me for what I had to do. Then last week Ingrahm called me on the phone and asked me to meet the two of them at a motel where they were staying. I did, we had a few drinks, talked, and I left. Then, as I was driving out of the parking lot, it happened. Ingrahm came running out the door of the motel lounge right into the path of my car. Don’t ask me why—he was always doing crazy things since he got that plate in his head. I ran over him, and Gipp was the only witness.

“He was mad with hate! He said he’d turn me in, say it was murder, that I’d threatened to run Ingrahm down! And it had happened so fast that there were no skid marks, nothing! I ran—I’m still running.”

“You’re not to blame,” Ellie said, looking at him with compassion. “But you sure made it look worse when you ran.”

Roebuck snorted. “I weighed the odds. It was all I could do. Anyway, I’m not sure Ingrahm is dead.”

Ellie’s voice was puzzled. “I don’t get it.”

“After leaving the scene of the accident I went to where I used to work to collect some money they owed me. My ex-boss was there. He refused to pay me and I didn’t have any choice but to take the money by force. He’s a very influential man who married the right woman. I think he convinced the police to fake a murder charge so I’d get scared and come crawling back. He didn’t know me very well.”

“But, Lou, could he do that…?”

“He could and he would and he did! And if I go back and Ingrahm
isn’t
dead, they’ll still have me for attempted murder and robbery!”

Ellie said nothing. Roebuck slowed the car, parked on the shoulder of the highway and sat with his head bowed, his eyes clenched shut. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to do,” he said, squeezing the steering wheel with both hands so hard that his body trembled. “Sometimes things go so wrong and nothing fits and I just don’t know what to do!”

Ellie placed a hand on his cheek, and with her other hand she caressed his shoulder until the trembling stopped. “You rest, Lou,” she said softly, urgently. “It doesn’t matter to me what you did. You rest and I’ll drive.”

Roebuck let out a long breath and opened his eyes, staring intently at the dashboard. “I’ll go around,” he said.

He got out of the car, walked around to the passenger’s side and got back in. As Ellie steered the car back onto the pavement and picked up speed he slumped in the seat, letting the gentle motion and vibration relax him. After about five minutes he rested his head on the seat back and went to sleep.

As he slept, he dreamed.

A long, lonely scream. Light, flickering red light over everything, moving across the thin membrane of his closed eyelids, forcing its pulsating redness into his mind. The acrid odor of smoke was fading….Roebuck opened his eyes and sat up violently. The car was stopped. There was a huge, red-tinted face outside the driver’s window, a face beneath a silver badged uniform cap.

“Didn’t mean to scare you, mister,” the face said, smiling a reddish smile.

“The officer stopped us because we only have one taillight,” Ellie explained sweetly. “It’s a state law.”