The web she weaves, p.44
The Web She Weaves, page 44
“Why don’t we go home,” Ellen said, touching his arm. Norman knew that if he broke down before her he would lose her, of course; her sympathy could not be trusted. “No, I’m all right,” he said, almost angrily. “It’s nothing.”
He stayed at her apartment for only a few minutes. She was tired and distracted and apologetic, and she seemed not to see how he wanted to remain with her, he would have talked of anything, done anything, if only she would protect him against the violence of the past— After he left her he went to a bar for a while and then, dizzy and sickened, he went home. In bed old fragments of prayers taunted his mind, and now and then it seemed to him quite clear that he had made a mistake, that he was perhaps losing his mind. He would do nothing. He would not give in. In the morning he would wake as usual to the pleasant smells from the kitchen below, he would go to the store and call Ellen, he would never drive out to that part of the country again.
But he was unable to call her. He started to dial her number several times, but always something came up and he was relieved to put back the receiver. Once he caught himself walking somewhere very deliberately—to his desk in the back office. He opened one of the drawers and glanced in at the pistol there, half covered with papers. Trembling, he hid it with papers. He stood there, staring down at the drawer for a while. No one came in, nothing happened. The ordinariness of everything, the refusal of life to change at all, baffled and angered him. He felt nauseous but nothing happened. In the rest room, watching himself suspiciously in the mirror, he believed shakily that his reflection was that of a guilty man.
After the store closed he drove out to the country. The drive took less time than it had the other day. While he drove he thought of nothing, not even Ellen, who ought to have been sitting beside him. … If he returned to the gas station and saw the man again, and if he could assure himself that it was not the same man he wanted, then perhaps he would call Ellen from the station; he would do that. But as he neared the small junction where the garage was supposed to be, he found himself looking shrewdly around, at houses, down lanes, down side roads. He passed the garage. No one was outside. A shabby garage with dented Coke signs and signs with scrawled numbers on them advertising gas prices, and other signs advertising cigarettes and spark plugs. The drive was just dirt and gravel, not paved. They did little business, he thought, and this was good. Several miles farther he turned down a side road and drove slowly along: country without houses, wild fields unowned by people, woods gone wild. When he saw a shanty by the edge of a woods, half a mile back from the road, he stopped the car and got out.
The shanty was deserted. It was roofed with tar paper and its wood had turned black. Inside there were newspapers on the ground, an old dented pan, some rags, a few tiny anthills. Weeds blossomed everywhere. Norman tried to imagine what use the shanty had had, who might have built it. It seemed to him a mystery: built, abandoned, now ready for him and his brother’s killer.
When he drove back he stopped at the garage for gas. The man who serviced him was not the killer, but Norman saw that there was another man inside, drinking soda pop. “What time do you people close?” Norman said. “Stay open till ten, summer,” the man said. Norman hardly glanced at him. His eyes kept moving back to the open door of the garage. “That’s all, thanks,” he said, smiling. It was the first time he had smiled since having first seen that man.
He called Ellen from his home. At once his voice became anxious and apologetic, and her silence tormented him. “I know, I know what you said that time about not wanting to get involved with people you can’t trust,” he said hopelessly, “and how you don’t want—you don’t—” He fell silent. The vision of her that her silence evoked in him was transparent and unfamiliar; was she going to say nothing? How long had they known each other? “I am going to see you again, aren’t I?” Norman said. “Yes, of course,” she said faintly. “But I think you should get some rest or see a doctor. You don’t seem yourself… .” “No, there’s nothing wrong with me,” Norman said sharply. She did not reply, as if startled. “When can I see you? Tomorrow?” Norman said. “No, not tomorrow, I forgot— I have something—” “What are you doing?” she said. “I’m sorry, I just can’t make it then. The day after tomorrow?” Norman said. “Can I call you?” “Of course you can call me,” she said meekly and coldly. Norman felt in that instant her strange hatred for him, for the force that drew him from her and before which he was so helpless; his eyes smarted with tears. “I’ll call you, then,” he said. He had the idea as he hung up that perhaps he would never see her again, and yet he could do nothing about it.
The next evening he drove out to the country again. Signs, barns, houses, side roads had become familiar. On the floor of the backseat were a small bag of groceries and two blankets and an old kerosene lamp he had found in the attic. It was nearly ten o’clock when he approached the garage. His heart was thudding dangerously, yet it did not upset him. He knew his body would not fail him, he could drive it as he drove the car. It was when he did not make himself think of the killer, when, out of disgust or fear, he tried to think of other things, that he felt the overwhelming guilt that had become for him the most extraordinary emotion he had ever felt. Now, prepared, everything ready and planned, he felt no guilt at all. With his car headlights off, he parked down the road from the garage, watching. Bushes screened him partly. There was his man—dragging a carton of empty soda pop bottles inside the garage. Norman waited. He had never before felt quite so free: the immensity of freedom to act and to act entirely without consequence. He wondered if that man and the two boys with him had experienced this same sweet suffocating freedom that afternoon sixteen years ago… . The garage darkened. Norman had no trouble making out the killer, who was taller than the other man and walked with heavy plodding steps as if he were overcome by the heat or by exhaustion. There was something self-righteous in that walk, Norman saw. The men went to their cars, the car doors slammed shut almost simultaneously, the other man drove off. The killer paused to light a cigarette. He tossed the match onto the gravel and Norman’s lips jerked into a grin of recognition.
He stepped on the gas pedal and was able to head off the man’s car just as it was about to turn onto the road. Norman leaned across the seat and waved into the glaring headlights. The man yelled, “What do you want? We’re closed.” But Norman had already gotten out of the car. “Something’s wrong with my car, it’s an emergency,” he said. The man swore. His car engine roared and the car rocked impatiently back on the gravel as the man twisted the steering wheel. “You, wait,” Norman said. “Not so fast.” He took the gun out of his pocket and approached the man’s open window. Behind the headlights he was helpless now, his face sagging at the sight of the gun as if he expected it. Norman’s heart thudded viciously and he heard his own words as if from a distance. “I want to talk to you. I don’t want to hurt you. You just get in this other car.” The man did not move. Norman could hear him swallow. “Did you recognize me the other day?” he said. The man’s eyes were fascinated by the gun. “There’s no money in there,” he said hoarsely. “Just some dollar bills. We made—we made a goddamned four dollars today—” “I don’t want money,” Norman said. “Get out. Get in my car.” The man moved jerkily, then paused. Everything was still except for the noises of the insects. “You don’t want any money?” the man said after a moment.
Norman sat beside him and the man drove. They went along slowly, down the dirt road, jerking and bouncing in the ruts. “They’re waiting for me at home,” the man said cautiously. “My wife and kids.” Norman said nothing. When they reached the shanty—he had left a rag near the ditch for a marker—he had the man turn off the road and drive down an old cow lane and into the woods. The car churned and became entangled in underbrush. “Look, I don’t know what you want,” the man said, bowed over the steering wheel, “but I—I— Why don’t you get somebody else for it, not me — My wife is—” “I’m not going to hurt you,” Norman said. He was a little embarrassed at the man’s fear: he had supposed the man would be the same as he had been sixteen years ago, cold and deliberate, without emotion. “I just want to talk with you,” he said. “I want to get the truth from you. Where were you about sixteen years ago?”
He watched the man’s damp face. It was an ugly, confused face, and yet its younger image had not been ugly, exactly. “I don’t—I don’t know,” the man muttered. “Please try to remember,” Norman said. “What’s your name?” “Cameron,” he said at once. “Anyone around here would know me— Look, what do you want? I don’t know you. With that gun there—” “I’m not going to hurt you,” Norman said softly. “Just tell me where you were sixteen years ago.” “We come up from Kentucky, first me, then my mother and father,” he said. Again he swallowed clumsily. “I was maybe twenty then. I don’t know. Look, I think you want some other man, I mean, it looks to me you got some other man in mind—” “You never came up from Kentucky,” Norman said. “Or if you did you were younger than that.” “I don’t know how old I was,” the man said, “maybe I was younger—” His face rippled nervously. “You remember me, don’t you?” Norman said. “You knew me the other day, too, didn’t you?” “What other day?” the man said. In his heavy face this new, nervous rigidity contrasted ludicrously with the lazy slabs of flesh close about his jaws. He looked as if he were trying to shake himself free of the weight of his flesh. “I only want to talk to you, then the police will take care of it,” Norman said. “Take care of what?” the man said at once. “You know what,” Norman said. The man stared across at him. He supposes I am crazy, Norman thought. “So you don’t admit it? That you remember me?” he said. He might have been speaking to a customer in the store, prodding and herding him on to a purchase, some clothing Norman himself looked at but did not see, had no interest in seeing because he had already seen it too many times before. “I’m not going to force anything out of you,” Norman said. “I give you my word on that. We’re going to have a long talk, nothing hurried. Because I’ve been waiting sixteen years—” “What’s this sixteen years?” the man said. His voice was trembling and raw, a voice Norman had not yet heard from him. There was a certain edginess there too, a recklessness that made Norman draw back so he could watch the man more carefully. Nothing was going to go wrong. He had control. While insects swirled about the headlights and tapped against the windshield Norman felt strength course through him as if it were a sign, a gift, something supernatural. “Sixteen years ago you killed my brother,” he said. “Sixteen years ago last March.” “Killed your brother!” said the man. He made a whistling noise. “Look, mister, I never killed nobody. I told you before—it looked like you were after somebody else, something you said— You got the wrong guy here, believe me. I never killed nobody. Who was your brother? Am I supposed to know you? Were you in the Army with me or something?” Norman let him talk. The man’s words tumbled from him as if stunned with shock; they meant nothing. Finally he stopped. The insects flicked themselves lightly against the car windows and disappeared. “Turn off the lights,” Norman said. He had his flashlight ready. “What do you want?” said the man. “What are you going to do?” “Turn them off. All right, now get out. Get out,” Norman said. “What are you going to do?” said the man. “Are you going to—going to— You said something about the police, why don’t you call them or something? I mean, they got these things on record, could look it up and see when it was—they keep a record of all these things, mister, that would clear it all up— Because I never killed nobody, not even in the Army when we was overseas, and not even by accident or anything— Was your brother in the Army?” “Get out of the car,” said Norman.
“Then where are we going?” the man said, gripping the steering wheel. “What are you going to do to me?” “I want to talk to you,” Norman said. “You’re crazy!” the man whispered.
They went in the shanty, Norman behind the man. Norman put the things down and shone the flashlight around from corner to corner. “What place is this?” the man said. “What are you going to do?” His teeth had begun to chatter; Norman was astonished. “Please sit down,” he said. Cobwebs hung dustily from the ceiling. In the glare of the flashlight the weeds were stark and vivid, casting brittle shadows that froze in a complex, teethlike structure against the bottoms of the walls. The man sat, slowly, groping about. He looked gross and foolish sitting in the weeds, his fat stomach straining against his belt. About his forehead dark strands of hair were plastered as if arranged by hand. Norman crouched against the opposite wall. “I want the truth from you,” he whispered. “The truth.” The man’s lips began to move, but he said nothing. “Try to remember,” Norman said. “You killed a boy and he’s dead, his life was ended in a few minutes, and now you’re here with me and alive, you’ve got to see the difference between the two— He’d be just bones now, everything rotted away if you dug him up, and you’re sitting here alive. He was seventeen when you killed him.” The man brushed weeds away from him as if they were insects, in terror; then he stopped abruptly. “I think you do remember me,” Norman said. “I was with him that day. You and the other two boys—”
“Other two?”
“Other two boys. All three of you. You pushed us in the river and wouldn’t let us out. You hit Jack with something—when they found him his face was all slashed. I saw it myself. It was you and two other boys. I know your face.”
The man began to shake his head. “My wife is waiting for me,” he said faintly, “I can’t talk too long… .”
“Where are the other two? Did they leave the city?”
“Mister, I got to go home— They’re—”
“Shut up about that!” Norman cried. He waited until his anger died down. “I just want the truth. A boy is dead and you killed him and you’re going to tell the truth before you leave here!”
“Mister, I never killed nobody—”
“But I saw you. I saw you. I saw your face.”
“It wasn’t me, it was somebody else.”
“It was you.”
“I got all kinds of cousins and guys that look like me—”
“Living up here?”
“Sure, around here, in the city too—”
“You said you were from Kentucky.”
The man paused. His teeth chattered and he stared at Norman as if a flash of pain had overcome him. Then he said, “I am. They come up too.”
“You all came up? When was this?”
“A while ago, I don’t know—”
“You’re lying,” Norman said. “Goddamn filthy liar.” “I’m not lying!”
The man’s lips twisted up into a terrified angry grimace. Norman felt his own lips twitch as if in imitation. “I want justice, nothing but justice,” Norman whispered. He was shining the flashlight on the man’s heaving chest so that the fainter halo of light illuminated the man’s face, startling shadows upward from his nose and lips and the deep sockets of his eyes. “I’ve given up things to get here tonight,” Norman said. “I’m going to get an answer from you, going to get justice. We must have justice.” He might have marveled at what he said, at his strange talent, for where in the long tedious days at the store and in the evenings at home had he learned such things? Yet he felt the truth of what he was saying. It was true. He had been sent here, he could not turn away from it now if he wanted to. For this man he had given up Ellen, he would never break free and into her world now, he had given her up, killed her in himself. “There are things that have to be finished up, made even,” Norman said. “If I turned you over to the police without a confession it wouldn’t do any good. Nobody would care. Nobody knows about it anymore except me and my family and you…. Are you going to tell me the truth?”
The man sat staring down at his thick legs, motionless. “You and two other kids, one Saturday afternoon,” Norman said softly. “On the docks. You knocked us both in the water and wouldn’t let us out. You hit Jack, cut up his face. His eye was cut. My brother drowned but I, I didn’t, a man sitting down aways came over and got me. You read about it in the papers probably. You and them. You kept on reading it till it was forgotten. Nobody cared. And even me, I suppose I forgot it too…. Now are you going to tell me the truth?”
After several hours the man was sitting in the same position. Norman had lit the kerosene lamp and was sitting with his back against the wall, watching the man cautiously. When he asked the man about telling the truth, sometimes he answered and sometimes he did not. When he said nothing Norman had to fight down an impulse to strike him. He had to control his anger. “You son of a bitch,” the man whispered. “Going to shoot me anyway, why not now?”
“I just want the truth,” Norman said. “I want it written down and signed. Your confession.”
“My confession …”
“On paper. Signed with your name.”
“Then what?”
“I told you what.”
“Then you’re going to shoot me, aren’t you?”
“No. I told you.”
“Should I write it on paper or what? Do you have some?”
“Then you did do it?”
The man squinted. “Didn’t you say you saw me?” “Yes, I saw you.”
“Then I must of done it.”
“Do you admit it?”
The man’s face looked paralyzed. “Do you?” Norman said, leaning forward. The bovine stupidity of that face— which he felt he had been staring at for years, hating—was suddenly too much for him. He slashed the back of the gun against the man’s knee, for no reason, without really knowing what he had done. The blow did not hurt, the man seemed only baffled by it. Norman’s face burned. “You made me do that,” he said accusingly. “I didn’t mean to—I didn’t plan— You made me do it.”
