Peter Straub - If You Could See Me Now

Then a secondary, nearer motion: I see Duane, dressed in his working clothes, coming indecisively down the path. He carries a shotgun under one arm, but he seems in an uneasy relationship to it. He marches forward ten feet, the shotgun pointing the way, and then he pauses, looks at it, and turns his back on me. A few paces up the path, then another turn and the resumption of the march in my direction. Then he looks at the shotgun again. He takes another three steps forward. Then he sighs — I see his shoulders lift and depress — and tosses the gun into the weeds by the garage. I see his mouth form the; word bitch . He glances at the old farmhouse for a moment as if he is wishing that he might see it too in flames. Then he looks up at the window and sees me. I immediately smell gunpowder and burning flesh. He says something, jerking his body, but the words do not carry through the glass, and I thrust open the window.

“Get out here,” he says. “God damn you, get out here.”

I go downstairs and out onto the porch. He is pacing over the ruin of the front lawn, his hands deep in the coverall pockets, his head bent. When he sees me, he gives a powerful sideways kick to a ridge of dirt left by a skidding tire. He glares at me, then bends his head again, and swivels his foot in the ridge of dirt. “I knew it,” he says. His voice is hoarse and choking. “Damn women. Damn you.”

His face seems to be flying apart. His condition is unlike the fury I had seen earlier, and more like the suppressed dull rage I had witnessed in the equipment barn, when he flailed the tractor with a hammer. “You’re filth. Filth. You made her filthy. You and Zack.”

I come out of the porch into waning sunlight. Duane seems nearly to be steaming. To touch him would be to burn your hands. Even in my foggy state, concentrated on what will happen four or five hours later, I am impressed by the high charge of Duane’s emotional confusion. His hatred is nearly visible, but as if suffocated, like a fire under a blanket.

“I saw you drop the gun,” I say.

“You saw me drop the gun,” he mimics. “You saw me drop the gun. Big fucking deal. You think I couldn’t kill you with my bare hands?” With ten per cent more pressure behind it, his face would explode and go sailing away in a hundred pieces. “Hey? You think you’re gonna get away that easy?”

Get away with what, I could ask, but I am riveted by his despair.

“Well, you ain’t,” he says. He cannot control his voice, and it spirals up into falsetto. “I know what happens to you sex creeps in jail. They’ll make hash out of you down there. You’ll wish you were dead. Or maybe you’ll be in a nut house. Huh? Either way, you’re gonna rot. Rot . Every day you’ll be a little sorrier you’re still alive. And that’s good. Because you don’t deserve to die.”

The quantity of his hatred awes me.

“Oh, it’s gonna happen, Miles. It’s gonna happen . You had to come back here, didn’t you? Wave your goddamned face, your goddamned education, in front of me? You bastard. I had to beat it out of her, but she told me. She admitted it.” Duane brings himself forward toward me, and I see the colors alternating on his face. “Guys like you think you can get away with anything, don’t you? You think the girls will never talk about it.”

“There was no ‘it,’ ” I say, finally understanding.

“Tuta saw her. Tuta saw her come out. She told Red ,and my friend Red told me. So I know, Miles, I know. You made her filthy. I can’t even stand to look at you.”

“I didn’t rape your daughter, Duane,” I say, scarcely believing that this scene is happening.

“You say. So tell me what happened, shithead. You’re good with words, you gotta command of the language, tell me what happened.”

“She came to me. I didn’t ask her to. I didn’t even want her to. She climbed into my bed. She was used by someone else.”

Of course Duane misunderstands me. “Someone else—”

“She was used by Alison Greening.”

“Goddam, goddam, goddam,” and he jerks his hands out of his pockets and strikes himself on either side of his head. “When they got you locked up to rot, I’m gonna burn this place to the ground, I’m gonna bulldoze it over, all you city people can go to hell, I’m—” He is calmer. He takes his fists from his temples, and his eyes blaze at me. They are, I notice for the first time, the same color as his daughter’s, but as filled with abstract light as Zack’s.

“Why did you decide not to shoot me?”

“Because that’s too easy on you. You didn’t come back here, stir it all up, just to get shot. The worst things in the world are gonna happen to you.” His eyes I blaze again. “You don’t have to think I don’t know about that little fucker Zack. I know about how she sneaks out. You don’t know anything I don’t, even if you buy ‘em drinks and that. I got ears. I hear her crawling back into her room in the mornings — she’s just dirt, like all the others. Starting with the one I named her after. They’re all dirt. Animals. A dozen of ‘em wouldn’t make one good man. I don’t know why I ever got married. After that Polish bitch I knew all about women. Dirty , like you. I knew I couldn’t keep her and you apart. Women are all the same. But you’re going to pay.”

“Do you hate me so much because of Alison Greening?” I ask. “Pay for what?”

“For being you.” He says this flatly, as if it is self-explanatory. “It’s all over for you, Miles. Hovre is gonna put you away, I just talked to him. Twenty-four hours at the most. If you try to run, they’ll get you.”

“You talked to Hovre? He’s going to arrest me?” I feel the beginnings of relief.

“You bet your ass.”

“Good,” I say, startling Duane. “That’s what I want.”

“Jesus man,” Duane utters softly.

“Alison Greening is coming back tonight. She’s not what she used to be- — she’s something horrible. Rinn tried to warn me.” I look into Duane’s incredulous face. “And she’s the one who has been killing those girls. I thought it was Zack, but now I know it was Alison Greening.”

“Stop-saying-that-name,” Duane says.

I turn around and begin to sprint toward the house. Duane shouts behind me, and I yell back to him, “I’m going inside to call Hovre.”

He follows me inside and glares at me suspiciously as I dial the number of the police station. “Ain’t gonna do you no good,” he mutters, stumping around the kitchen. “Only thing you can do now is wait for it. Or get in that heap of yours and try to run. According to Hank you can’t do more than forty in her, though. You wouldn’t get to Blundell before Hovre caught you.” He is talking as much to himself as to me; his bowed back faces me.

I am listening to the ringing of the telephone, expecting Dave Lokken to answer; but Polar Bears’ voice comes to me instead. “Chief Hovre.”

“This is Miles.”

Duane: “Who you talkin’ to? Is that Hovre?”

“This is Miles, Polar Bears. Why aren’t you on your way out here?”

There is a baffling pause. Then he says: “Why, Miles I just been hearing about you. Seems you couldn’t stop. I reckon your cousin Du-ane is there with you.”

“Yes. He is.”

“Fuckin’-A I am,” says Duane.

“Good. Say, we got results on that blood. It’s AB, all right. It’ll take another day to break it down further to see if it’s male or female, the lab boys say.”

“I don’t have another day.”

“Miles old friend, I’d be surprised if you had another five minutes. Isn’t Duane carrying a twelve-gauge? I told him to bring one when he went down to see you. The law can overlook some things a man might do, if he’s been pushed too far.”