Джон Макдональд - The End of the Night

“You do what I tell you to do,” Sandy said softly.

“That’s over,” Shack said. “No more of that.”

And it was all going to blow up, right then and there, in ten thousand pieces. I edged toward a table lamp. The base looked heavy enough.

Nan said, “You damn fools!” and she went by me almost at a run, right at Shack, and for a moment I thought she had the knife in her hand, held low. But she flung her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him. “What do you want with somebody who don’t know the score, honey?” she cooed at him.

He tried to pull her arms free, but they were strongly locked.

“Be nice to Nan, cutie-pie,” she murmured.

His face changed. She tugged him out of the doorway. They went awkwardly across the room toward the other bedroom.

“What’s going on here?” Sandy demanded.

“Close your face,” Nan said sweetly, and they entered the other room and banged the door shut.

I went through the doorway. Helen was standing by the window staring at me, tears running down her face, shiny in the first pale light of day. As I closed the door from the inside, I looked out at Sandy. He spread his hands and shrugged as I closed the door and locked it. Nan had saved the group. I couldn’t ask myself whether it was worth saving. Perhaps Helen was. You can go and go until you find the last limit of yourself, and there’s no way to get beyond that.

I went toward her slowly, smiling to reassure her.

“He’s gone, dear. He won’t bother you any more.”

“I’m scared of him. Why won’t you take me home?”

“It’s a long, long trip home, Helen. It’s time to rest up now.”

“Really?”

“Really and truly.”

She tried a small smile, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “All right, then.”

“You better go to bed.”

“I haven’t got any nightie or anything.”

“You better just stretch out, dear.”

“Will you stay here?”

“I’ll stay here. Yes.”

“Okay, then.” She crawled onto the bed closest to the window and stretched out and gave a great yawn and rubbed her eyes. “He knocked me down,” she said in a little voice.

“It won’t happen again. Go to sleep, honey.”

I sat on the other bed, a few feet from her. She had turned toward me, her clasped palms under her cheek. I noticed something about her eyes. I knew that in the case of head injuries, one of the things they look at is the eyes. The pupil of her left eye was visibly larger than the pupil of the right one. I wondered what it meant, how dangerous a symptom it was.

Her eyes closed. Through the soles of my feet I could feel a faint vibration that shook the frame cottage. I could hear the muffled sounds of the mating of Shack Hernandez, a flapping, thudding sound as though some leathery animal had been caught in a trap and now, in a senseless panic, was killing itself with its struggles.

When her breathing was deeper and I knew she slept, I gently removed the woman-shoes from the tired, injured child. I sat near her and watched her sleep all that day, while the sun swung up and over us and down. I smoked cigarettes and dropped them on the cheap, shiny varnish and ground them out with the sole of my shoe. I had no desire for sleep. The stimulant drugs were making me use myself up.

Once, when she had turned, and one hand was free, I reached and took it on impulse, and her fingers tightened on mine. I wondered if sleep was good for a head injury. Several times I watched her closely to be certain she was breathing. Even with lipstick gone and her hair tousled, she was a beautiful woman, full of perfections that revealed themselves, one after another.

The long hours passed. Bright spots of sun came through the chinks of the blinds and moved across the floor, the bed, the girl. Outside the cottage I heard the sounds of summer vacation, the rasp of outboards on the lake, the squalling and shrieking of children, music too far away to be identified, men yelling commands, women yelping with jackal laughter. Several times people walked by, close to the window, and I heard mysterious pieces of conversation.

“... so how d’ya like it, he comes back and he tells me it isn’t twelve dollars any more, it’s up to...”

“... drawing forty a week from the union alia time he was on strike plus the unemployment...”

“... I hope to hell she ain’t gone already. Honest to Christ, Sammy, you never seen such a pair...”

And thrice more during the day the familiar animal was trapped and flapped its foolish life away.

I thought of my curious ambivalence, my schizoid attitude toward the sleeping girl, despising what she represented, yet feeling a protective tenderness which I would have thought impossible for me.

I did not want to think of what would happen to her.

I was standing purposelessly at the window, looking out through a crack in the blinds at a small slice of blue lake when I heard her make a slight sound, and heard the bed creak. I turned around. She was sitting up and looking at me. She had a puzzled look. Her eyes were clear and aware.

“Who are you?” she asked in a woman’s voice.

I sat on the foot of her bed. She pulled her feet away and looked warily at me. “Back to arrogance,” I said. “Back to imperious demands. Ring for the waiter, Helen.”

“Are you trying to make sense?” she asked.

“You’d be very smart to keep your voice down, Helen. Very smart.”

“But who are you? Where am I?” With gingerly fingertips she touched the place where her hair was black-matted with her blood. The swelling was not as great. “Was I in an accident?”

“Sort of an accident. You’re somewhere in western Pennsylvania. Seven Mile Lake, if that means anything.”

“It doesn’t. Was I on a trip?”

“Keep the voice down, please.”

“Why?”

“We’ll get to that. Just accept the fact it’s important.”

She looked beyond me, frowning. “Wait a minute! They didn’t want me to see Arnold, and I shouldn’t have. He was completely mad. I couldn’t communicate. When he started up, I jumped. I could feel myself falling...” She touched her head and winced again. “I did this then?”

“Yes.”

She looked at a tiny gold watch. “Four in the afternoon?”

“Yes. You hit your head last night.”

She stared at me with obvious anger. “My God, do I have to pry all this out of you bit by bit? What the hell am I doing in Pennsylvania?”

“You’re kidnaped,” I told her. It sounded ridiculously melo-dramatic.

“Do you mean that?” she asked me.

“Yes.”

“You’re asking my father for money?”

“No. It isn’t that well organized, Helen. There aren’t any special plans. You’re just... kidnaped. We came along and you were knocked out, lying on the road. So we brought you along with us.”

“You were drunk?”

“No.”

“How many of you?”

“Four of us. One is a girl.”

“What’s your name, anyway?”

“That wouldn’t be pertinent.”

She sat, biting her lip, staring at me. I could tell that her mind was working, and I could sense that it was excellent equipment, agile and logical.

“Kidnaping is a very stupid idea. Don’t you think you made a mistake?”

“It’s possible.”

“If it was just... a sort of joke, you could let me go, couldn’t you? If you’re not after money. I’d make sure you didn’t get into any trouble. I’d say... I’d hitched a ride with you.”

“The others wouldn’t want to let you go, Helen.”

“But they’re not here. You could unhook the screen and let me out that window and tell them later that it was the smart thing to do. You do look and sound too bright for this sort of thing, really.”