John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

When they were seated in the cab of the truck she said, “Funny-looking sky.” She hunched forward to look up under the visor.

Craine hunched in the same way, starting up the engine. The clouds were high and fast, the sky a sickly yellow, almost green. “Storm on its way,” he said, and nodded. He backed out carefully, both hands on the wheel, shifted, and drove to the exit and out onto the street. He felt the tingle coming, and concentrated. It faded back.

“I hate storms,” she said. She was sitting with her shoulders against the plastic of the seat back. She pursed her lips as if thinking deeply. “I’m scared to death of them.”

“Oh, no need to worry about storms,” he said. The air had gotten still warmer, hot as a cow’s breath.

She turned her head sharply to look at him, eyes wide with indignation. “Are you kidding? If a tornado hits your house, that’s it!”

“It won’t,” he said. “I’ve been living here—”

“They say one hit Murphysboro and blew half the town away.” She reached out to the dashboard with her right hand as if to brace herself.

“That was years ago,” Craine said.

She turned her face forward, still bracing herself, thinking about it. “Jesus,” she said, and then: “I feel naushus.” Her face was gray.

Ahead of him, the railroad gate went down and he slowed, then, thirty feet back from the gate, eased the brake on. It was odd how carefully her presence made him drive. Normally, give him a whiskey or two and it was every dog and cat for himself. As the switch engine slid into view he said, “Elaine, how many people did you tell about the man in the blue and white runner’s clothes?”

Again she turned sharply. “Nobody,” she said, then frowned and turned her face forward once more. “I wrote a paper about it in advanced composition. I guess the teacher read it in class.”

“You guess?”

“He did, I mean.” She nodded. Abruptly, her mouth fell open and she jerked her face around to stare. “You believe me! You saw him! That’s why you called your office!”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. A semi pulled up behind them, brakes hissing.

She wasn’t fooled for a moment — no dolt, this girl, he was beginning to see. But then, Gerald Craine was no dolt either, no beginner, he told himself, sitting with a wry smile, watching the switch engine slide back out of sight. He hung weightless an instant, waiting for the tiny electric tingle. He saw he must somehow get his mind much clearer and, with an effort, did so, like an optometrist snapping on a lens that brings the eye chart to focus. “It must be a terrible thing,” he said — an ironic drawl—“to live your whole life in a state of wild panic.” He didn’t need to glance at her to know that the gentle attack had distracted her. “Afraid of tornadoes a month after the season for ’em, afraid of restaurants, afraid of phantoms wearing blue and white clothes any fool can get from Sears if he’s got twenty-four dollars. Afraid of detectives, afraid of men…” The gate went up. He eased carefully forward, crossed the tracks, and turned left onto University, heading for Church, then Ash. “You ever try living with a man, Elaine?”

When she said nothing he glanced at her and saw that she was angry and alarmed; rightly enough. A thought of the bottle in his pocket came briefly into his mind. “I didn’t mean to offend you with that question,” he said. “Part of my business is figuring psychological angles, you know what I mean? But you’re the client, it’s your money. You don’t like the way I work—” Still she said nothing, and Craine sucked the insides of his cheeks, thinking fast. “It’s a hard thing, working for a client that doesn’t trust you — client that thinks you don’t respect her human rights.” He kept the irony — a mere hint. “I’ve noticed how you’ve been. I don’t blame you, understand.” He glanced over. She was listening. He reached inside his suit coat pocket and drew out his pipe. They were coming up on Ash, and though he drove more slowly than a farmer between fields, he knew he’d never bring her around before she was out of the truck and free of him. Hurried though he was, he fitted his pipe between his teeth and got out matches, then looked at her. The lines of her face were too sharp; another trick of the Scotch. “I can let you off and wait for you, if you like, and then drive you to class.”

“I missed class,” she said. She looked straight ahead. “I haven’t got another one for an hour.”

“Well, in that case—”

They’d come to the house. Craine eased over to the curb and parked. He left the motor running. The girl’s lips were pursed, and Craine thought without a trace of intent of kissing her.

She put her hand on the door handle, then said, staring forward, “You say you’ve noticed how I’ve been. How have I?”

He lit his pipe, taking his time, then shut off the engine. On the porch of the house where she had her apartment, three students sat talking, looking without interest at the truck.

“Well,” Craine said, “talkative. Eager to give no offense.” He rolled down the window to let the smoke out. Warmth rushed in. “Desperate, you might say. Scared half to death because you think I’m a crazy old drunk.”

She nodded.

“Which I am, of course. Though it seems to me I’m the best hope you’ve got.”

To his surprise, she nodded again, brow furrowed, eyes still gazing straight ahead. He risked closing the fingers of his left hand around the neck of the bottle in his pocket.

“You don’t believe he means to kill me,” she said.

“No.”

“But you believe he exists.”

“I’m not sure about that yet.” The pipe had gone out and the matchbook was empty. He reached in front of her — she pressed back against the seat — to open the glove compartment and get out more matches.

“You think it’s someone who heard that paper of mine.”

Craine lit his pipe. “It could be that.”

She continued to sit with her hand on the door handle, gazing forward. “Is it really too late for tornadoes?”

“They’re not likely, anyway, this time of year. I suppose it’s possible.”

She considered it, or considered something else. He had no choice but to smoke and wait. Suddenly something flew straight at the windshield then shot up and right. He started, but inwardly. Elaine, he saw, had missed it. He tightened his grip on the matchbook. She said, “Why did you ask me that … question about men?”

“Just groping,” he said. He blew smoke out the window, masking his alarm. There was that tingle. Something stirred behind him, or perhaps stirred in the truck’s side mirror — flash of steel, sudden light — and he froze. But the street was empty — an old Pontiac down the block, moseying home like an old woman who’s been to market; nothing more.

The girl said, “I’m not really as bad as I sounded in that letter. Once a teacher of mine, an older man—”

The flash came, ghostly, too brief to register except as an afterimage. “I don’t need to know,” Craine said. “It’s all right.”

“He was married.”

“Don’t tell me. I shouldn’t have asked.” He pocketed the matches, put the pipe on the dashboard. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the girl’s hand on the door handle was trembling, all wrinkled and spotted, not a young girl’s hand but a palsied old woman’s. He turned to look straight at it and it resumed its former shape.

“Look, if there’s something I can tell you that will help,” she was saying.

“I’m a detective,” Craine said. “Just a detective.”

She turned her head to look at him, her eyes brimming tears, and then, with sudden violence, she pushed down the door handle and opened the door.