Брайан Гарфилд - What of Terry Conniston?

Floyd never glanced at any of them after that. Theodore went out, carrying Georgie. Billie Jean lit a stick of pot and even offered it around but no one wanted it and Billie Jean settled down in a corner, hunched around her smoke, taking quick little furtive puffs. Mitch held Terry close to him until she stopped trembling, whereupon she turned away from him and settled to the floor much the way a pneumatic tire settles when punctured. She watched Floyd the way she might have watched a clock ticking toward — what? Mitch kept his uneasy stare on her; he pressed his hands together until he heard the knuckles crack.

Withdrawn and brooding, Floyd sat surrounded by a coiling charge of electric malevolence which tightened notch by notch as the night passed. His immobile silence was more sinister than a furious rage.

When Theodore returned he dropped Georgie’s clothes in a bundle on the floor and obliviously opened a can of beer and drank it quickly, afterward belching with loud satisfaction. So far as Mitch could tell Floyd didn’t even glance at him. In her corner Billie Jean mewed like a frightened kitten but Theodore only turned his head to stare at her; he did not go to her. They all remained like that, squatting in their individual solitary caves of silence across a lengthening stretch of time which to Mitch seemed almost visible, like a sheet of glass slowly disintegrating into brittle frosty fragments.

Mitch waited through the awful stillness without reckoning the passage of hours. A point came when he found himself sitting crosslegged, his hand on the silken warmth of Terry Conniston’s forearm, her head propped gently against his shoulder — he did not remember moving to her, nor remember her responding to his intrusion. Her eyes had gone dark behind their opaque placenta of fear; he understood that she was clinging to him only because it was better than sitting alone, untouched, in taut terrible emptiness.

She seemed unaware of the fact that he was looking at her, or perhaps indifferent to it. Her lower lip jutted in profile — afraid, defiant, infuriated by her own despair. The bare triangle of smooth golden skin at her throat held his attention: the round thrusting solidity of her breasts, the concave crescent of her narrow waist, the round line of strong hip and long flank outlined against the dying lamp, and on her face the traces, etching deeper, of heavy and desperate strain.

The lamp went dry and the flame flickered out and it slowly penetrated Mitch’s dulled consciousness that streaks of gray light were sharding in through cracks around the windows and door. He got up, stiff in all his joints, slipping Terry’s hand out of his grip, and crossed to the front of the place. When he dragged the door open it squealed and scratched its way across an arc of sand and pebbles on the floor. The indeterminate half-light of dawn sprawled in through the opening, throwing a vague splash across the floor toward the spot where Georgie had died. Mitch stood in the open rectangle breathing the crisp air, pushing the residue of stale pot smoke from his nostrils.

When he turned back inside the light was growing stronger; Floyd’s eyes lay against him like glass-cutting diamonds, motionless but ready to slice. Mitch stood bolt still in his tracks.

Floyd was getting to his feet. Straightening up, looking at each of them in turn, walking slowly forward trailing uncertain mystery like a cloak: he passed Mitch a foot away and went on out through the door, ducking his head beneath the tilted beam.

Mitch waited ten seconds; then his eyes grew wide and he wheeled under the beam, outside.

Floyd stood out in the street, ten feet from the porch, frowning thoughtfully at the eastern sky. Half the sun was a red ball on a mountaintop. Floyd seemed to have the peripheral vision of a professional basketball player: he swiveled his head to look at Mitch, who had taken one step onto the porch and was standing still in deep shadows. The adrenaline pumping through his body made Mitch’s hands shake.

Floyd bent down slowly and picked up a clot of clay the size of his thumb. He rubbed it between his fingers until it disintegrated in a little shower of sand. Turning his face toward Mitch, he spoke from his semi-crouch:

“About that time.”

Floyd’s eyes seemed voracious. He put his right hand in the slit pocket of his jacket — the pocket where he kept the revolver. Mitch did not stir; he only breathed again when Floyd turned with a sharp snap of his shoulders and stalked across the street toward the barn.

The Oldsmobile started up and came out of the barn slowly, crunching stones. It stopped below the porch and Floyd leaned across to the open right-hand window. “Enjoy yourself,” he said, and tossed the revolver to the ground below the porch.

Mitch glimpsed Floyd’s hot quick smile and then the Olds-mobile’s engine roared. The tires spun, spraying back salvos, then gained purchase. The big car surged away, covering Mitch with dust.

He stepped down off the porch and picked up the gun. It occurred to him then that Floyd’s own emotions were no more important to Floyd than his tonsils, which had been removed in his childhood. Nothing would distract Floyd from his logically constructed plans.

Mitch had not known what to expect; frozen with fear, he had half believed Floyd would explode against them all. Now his brain slowly clamped onto the new realization after numbly dislodging from its former suspicion. Floyd meant to go through with it all as if nothing had happened.

The weight of the gun was unfamiliar in his hand. He turned and saw Theodore and Billie Jean standing just outside the door.

Billie Jean said matter-of-factly. “I don’t think he’s gonna come back.”

Theodore sat down with his legs dangling over, gripped the edge of the porch with both hands and rocked back and forth. The milky half-closed eye caught a glint of sunlight; he said, “You got the gun, Mitch. You want to do it or do I?”

“Do what?”

Theodore shrugged and kept rocking. “Her,” he said.

“Nobody’s touching her,” Mitch said. Rage swelled his eyes, fueled and banked by the long repressed night.

Billie Jean said, “She knows what we look like.”

Mitch didn’t reply. Theodore fixed his one-eyed stare on the gun and stopped rocking; his legs became still. Billie Jean said, “When Floyd gets back we ain’t going to want to waste a lot of time. Better get done with it now.”

“You just said you thought he wasn’t coming back. Make up your mind.”

“Either way,” Billie Jean said, “we got to stop her clock, don’t we? I mean, we can’t take her with us and we can’t leave her here to talk.”

“We’ll wait for Floyd,” Mitch said.

Theodore said, “Georgie’s dead. What’s he got to come back here for?”

The edge of that thought, fast-traveling, struck them all a sharp blow. Mitch’s eyes widened; he said, “We wait,” with more confidence than he felt.

Billie Jean said crossly, “He owes us money.”

“You’re talking as if he’d already run out on us.”

“Well, he has. You know he has. Who’s going to stop him pick up the money and just keep going across the line? Was you him, would you come back?”

I would , Mitch thought. But I’m not him. He wouldn’t be afraid of the rest of us coming after him .

As if reading his thoughts Billie Jean said, “Suppose’n he picks up the money and then he stops at a phone and tells the cops where to look for us.”

Theodore scowled. “Floyd wouldn’t do that to us.”

“You wanna bet? ”

Terry Conniston appeared in the door, pale and unsteady; clearly she had been listening. She fastened her gaze on Mitch. Theodore’s head twisted around on his short neck; he said in his casual abrasive voice, “We oughta use that gun on her now and get out of here, go on down the road and watch for Floyd. If Floyd comes, okay. If the cops come we fade back in the rocks and let them go by and then get the hell out of there. There’s a good spot up the road ten-twelve miles from here.”