Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

“Just sitting in their cars, goddam it — just sitting out there — no goddam trouble — and what the hell did you do? Make a goddam bomb? Look at my lawn!” He stomps heavily, too furious to speak any longer.

“I tried to call you,” I say to Polar Bears.

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you now!” Duane screams.

“I’m lucky they didn’t kill me then.”

Polar Bears firmly positions one hand on Duane’s shoulder. “Hold your horses,” he says. “Dave Lokken told me you called up. I didn’t expect there’d be any trouble, Miles. I figured you could take a bunch of our country boys starin’ at you from the road.”

“Sittin’ there — just sittin’ there,” Duane says, quietly now that Polar Bears is gripping his shoulder.

“I didn’t think you’d declare war on ‘em.”

“I didn’t think you’d go crawlin’ around after my girl either,” Duane hisses, and I see Polar Bears’ fingers tigh. “I warned you. I told you, stay off. You’re gonna get it — for sure.”

“They didn’t just sit there. Most of them left when they saw me dialing the telephone, but three of them decided to come for me.”

“See who they were this time, Miles?”

“That boy from the garage, Hank Speltz, a man named Roy, and one I didn’t know. One of those who threw stones at me in Arden.”

“ Stones… stones ,” hisses Duane, his contempt so great that it is almost despair.

“How d’ya manage all this?” He lifts his chin toward the lawn where tire tracks and brown muddy ruts loop crazily.

“They did most of it themselves. They drove all over it. I guess they were in a hurry to get out before you showed up. The rest I did. I flipped an open gascan from the garage on top of a burning cigarette, I didn’t even think it would work. You knew they were going to be here, didn’t you?”

“You got me again. Sure I knew. I figured they’d just help keep you—”

“Out of trouble. Like Paul Kant.”

“Yeah.” His smile almost expresses pride in me.

“You and Duane were together? With Alison?”

“Keep her name out of your mouth, damn you,” Duane says.

“Just having a beer in the Bowl-A-Rama.”

“Just having a beer. Not working on your story.”

“Even a cop doesn’t work all the time, Miles,” he says, and I think: no. You do work all the time, and that’s why you are dangerous. He takes his paw off Duane’s arm and shrugs his shoulders. “I wanted to explain to Duane here that you and me are sort of helpin’ each other out on these killings. That’s a big plus for you, Miles. You shouldn’t want to take that plus away from yourself. Now I hear you been talking to Duane about some crazy idea you got. You been talking about just the exact thing I told you not to talk about, Miles. Now that kinda makes me question your judgment. I just wanta be sure you’ve seen the error in your thinking. Old Duane here didn’t tell you you was right, did he? When you hit him with this crazy idea?” He looks at me, his face open and companionable. “Did you, Duane?”

“I said he should talk to you.”

“Well, you see, you got him all suspicious and worked up.”

“I knew it out at the quarry, really. I had the girl shout. You couldn’t hear her on the road.”

Duane stamps in a furious muttering half-circle. “Undressed. You were undressed.”

“Hold on, Duane, you’ll make it worse. Old Miles will just go on drawing the wrong conclusions if you get sidetracked. Now, Miles, Duane says he never said you was right in your ideas. Now let’s ask him. Were you out there that night?”

Duane shakes his head, looking angrily at the ground.

“Of course you weren’t. It’s all in the records my father made. You went out on 93 and turned the other way, toward Liberty. Right?”

Duane nods.

“You were mad at that little Greening girl, and you just wanted to get the hell away from her. Right? Sure,” as Duane nods again. “See, Miles, if you just tell a girl to yell without her knowing anything about why, she’s not liable to really give her best, like a girl would if she’s bein’ attacked. You see the error there? Now, I don’t want you to go on talking about this, because you’ll just dig yourself into a deep hole, Miles.”

There is no point in prolonging this charade. “That little Greening girl,” the figure of lean intensity I have seen leveling her muzzle toward the house? That little Greening girl, the fire in the woods and the blast of freezing wind? I can smell cold water about me.

I think that which I do not wish to think; and remember Rinn’s words. My guilt drowns me.

Duane, for different reasons, also does not wish to continue. “To hell with this,” he says. Then he straighs up and his pudgy red-and-white face flames at me. “But I warned you about seeing my daughter again.”

“She asked me to come with her.”

“Did she? Did she? That’s what you say. I suppose you say you didn’t take off your clothes in front of her.”

“It was just for swimming. She took hers off first. The boy undressed too.”

In front of Duane, I cannot tell Polar Bears my fears about Zack. I have already said too much, for Duane looks ready to flail out again.

I am trembling. I feel cold wind.

“Yeah, okay,” Duane says. “Sure. Whatever you say.” He turns his upper body toward me. “If you fool around with her, Miles, I won’t wait for anyone else to get you. I’ll get you myself.” Yet there is no real conviction in this threat, he does not care enough; treachery is what he expects from women.

Polar Bears and I watch him tramping up the path. Then he turns to me. “Say, you look kind of peaked, Miles. Must be all that skinny-dipping you do.”

“Which one of you raped her?”

“Hold on.”

“Or did you take turns?”

“I’m beginning to question your judgment again, Miles.”

“I’m beginning to question everything.”

“You heard me mention that hole you could be digging for yourself?” Polar Bears steps toward me, big and solid and full of serious concern, and I see dark blue blotches of perspiration on his uniform shirt, dark blue smudges beneath his eyes. “Jesus, boy, you gotta be crazy, throwing bombs at the citizens here, gettin’ yourself in trouble…” He is moving with a cautious, wary slowness and I think this is it: he’s going to break, he’s going to fight me . But he stops and rubs a hand over his face. “Pretty soon this is all gonna be over, Miles. Pretty soon,” He steps back, and the sour combination of sweat and gunpowder engulfing me like smoke recedes with him. “Miles. Jesus Christ. What was that you were telling Dave Lokken about something like a doorknob?”

I cannot answer.

That night and every night afterward I turned off the gas where Tuta Sunderson had shown me. In the mornings, when she heaved herself into the kitchen and began to cough and stamp her feet and shuffle around and clear her throat and produce the entire array of noises expressive of sullen discontent with which I had become familiar, among them was always the sharp grunt of suspicious disapproval — and contempt? — that accompanied her discovery that I had done so. I would have fired her but for my certainty that, like Bartleby, she would have come anyhow. The day after the visitation by Hank Speltz and the others, I heard the coughing, feet-stamping, etc., and went downstairs to ask her if she had known what was going to happen. Foolish me. “Did I know what? What was going to happen? So what happened?” She had made no comment on the condition of the lawn or the hole in the porch screen. I told her that I imagined her son had been involved. “Red? Red doesn’t get messed up in anything. Now how many eggs do you want to throw away today?”