Robert Wilson - A Hidden Place

“But if he understood—”

“It’s not as simple as that. All this lives in the deepest part of him.”

“Phantoms,” Nancy said scornfully. “Ghosts.”

Anna shrugged. “Travis’s virtuous woman is a kind of ghost, yes. Like your ghost.” Nancy frowned. “The ghost,” Anna went on, “of your father. Or the man you invented out of the memory of your father. The ghost you’ve been trying to placate all these years. …”

“I thought you couldn’t read minds.”

“Only the deepest parts.” After a moment: “I’m sorry.” Her voice was faint. “I shouldn’t have spoken.”

Nancy was astonished to find her eyes filling with tears. She dabbed her face with the wrists of her blouse. It was all crazy, of course. Anna was not human,- Travis was right; she could hardly be expected to understand how real people thought or felt. “It’s not really like that.” She turned back defiantly. “He was—he—”

But Anna held up her hand, pleadingly. “Truly, I’m sorry. I have to rest now.”

Nancy went out into the meadow—the sun was disturbingly low in the sky—to wait for Travis. He would come. He must. But the meadow was empty and the wind cut through this threadbare winter coat like a darning needle. She hugged herself and went back to the meager shelter of the switchman’s shack. Inside, she let her head loll against the fibrous wallboards and closed her eyes. When she opened them she gasped.

Anna was convulsing.

Her eyes had rolled up into her head. Her skin, always alarmingly pale, was dead-white now, blood-drained. The convulsions traversed her body; her spine bucked and arched over the thin stained mattress… “Anna!”

This was not the Change, Nancy thought dazedly, this was something else. Something new, something worse. She put her arm around the alien woman to steady her.

The contact was electric. So quickly that she could not steel herself, her mind was filled with hideous images.

The earth lurching under her feet. Fear. Fear and the footsteps behind her. A train roaring blackly in the near distance. The cold wind, the footsteps, the gun, the shockingly loud sound of it, pain invading her body in huge radiant arcs—

—and she was distantly aware of the scream that filled the confined space of the shack: it might have been Anna’s, or hers, or both.

Liza Burack picked up the phone on the second ring. She had been answering telephones more eagerly this autumn now that she had come to believe in the possibility of good news. “Yes?”

“Liza!” the voice on the other end boomed out. “This is Bob Clawson!”

She had not seen him since the Rotarian picnic four years ago, but Liza remembered the high-school principal well: the ample belly, the prissy three-piece suit he had worn, coat and all, all through that hot July day, fearful of betraying his dignity to the handful of high-school students who had shown up with their parents. “Good to hear your voice,” Liza said courteously. “Can I help you?”

“Actually, it was Creath I wanted to speak to.”

“Creath is putting in an extra hour at the ice plant.”

“Bull for work? Eh? Well, that’s good. That’s fine. I can call again another time.”

“May I tell him what this is about?” Liza was curious now, because Bob Clawson was town council, Bob Clawson was white collar, Bob Clawson didn’t phone up just anybody… and at that long-since picnic he had avoided the Buracks the way he might have avoided a rabid dog.

“Just a little group some of us are getting together,” Clawson said amiably. “I heard about your speech at the Women last week. Meat and potatoes Americanism, my wife tells me. Not enough of that going around these days.”

“Bad times,” Liza said automatically.

“Some of us are more than a little concerned.” Liza imagined who “some of us” might be: Bob Clawson knew every judge and lawyer and realtor in the county. “We wanted to get together, talk about doing something to protect the town. Thought Creath might be interested.”

She felt a small thrill run through her. Of course, their rehabilitation could not be complete so soon ;Clawson must have some secondary reason for wanting Creath, some dirty work he wanted done. But it was a stepping stone. She thought, we are at least on probation.

“I’m sure Creath will be anxious to talk to you,” she said.

“Well, I appreciate that, Liza.”

“Yes.”

“Good talking to you. I’ll call back, then.”

“Yes.” She thought of asking for his number but decided against it: better not to appear too anxious. “Thank you,” she said.

She hung up the phone and leaned a moment on the dust mop, waiting for her heart to calm its aggravated beat.

Everything was happening so quickly!

The evening was naturally anxious. Creath absorbed the news without visible reaction—only smoked his cigars and played the big Atwater-Kent radio. But Liza could tell by the way he held the paper creased in thirds, not turning the pages, that it was on his mind.

The phone rang at half past eight. Creath waited for Liza to pick it up. Bob Clawson. She passed the receiver to her husband; he motioned her out of the parlor and pushed shut the door with his foot.

Liza lingered in the hallway. She was not eavesdropping. Her posture was erect, disdainful. Still, she thought, words have a way of slipping through doors.

Tonight, however, Creath’s tone was suppressed; the conversation went on a maddeningly long time, but all Liza heard was “yes” and “no” and … if she had made it out correctly… one other word.

By nine Creath was out of the parlor. He went directly to the kitchen and poured a drink of water from the tap. From the way the veins stood out on his face Liza guessed he would have preferred hard liquor. “What is it,” she said, “what?”

“Nothing much,” Creath said: but it was the same falsely casual tone in which he had customarily lied to her about Anna Blaise (a memory she quickly suppressed). “Just Bob Clawson getting together some bullshit—pardon me—some two-bit smoker. Bunch of men griping about the Red Menace. Harmless, I guess.” lie took a big swallow of water. “Guess I’ll go.”

Liza nodded dutifully. Secretly, however, she retained her suspicions. She did not think “two bit” would describe any organization Bob Clawson would ever bother to get involved with.

And as for “smoker”—well, that was possible. Anything was possible. But the word that had drifted through the parlor door had not sounded much like “smoker” or “two bit.”

The word Liza had heard was “vigilante.”

Later that evening Liza got a phone call of her own: Helena Baxter calling to let her know that the votes from the last meeting had been counted; that the results were not official, of course, until the announcement the following weekend, but—speaking strictly off the record—it looked like Liza had won a landslide victory.

Travis watched the switchman’s hut from the reedy bank of the Fresnel River, dusk gathering around him like the cupped palms of two huge black hands. He hadn’t eaten for two days—his money had run out and there had been nothing to scrounge at the hobo jungle—and voices circled like birds inside him.

He was not sure how he had come to this. He was dead broke, his clothes were torn and stiff with dirt, the only way he had of washing himself was to dip his body in the frigid river water. All this was foreign to him. Mama had always been scrupulously clean; she had kept their small house soaped and dusted and aired. The thought created in him a wave of nostalgia so physical it left him weak-kneed. And his traitorous memory chose that moment to echo back something Creath had said (it seemed like) a long time ago: Well, we all know where that path inclines, I guess.