Horace read the whistles at the first signal. Seven long, four short: Main Street to railroad tracks, from Cascom River Bridge to Bank Street intersection. First he tried to find a bicycle, but all the tires were flat. No one seemed to ride any of the bicycles any more. They were all dusty and out of order, so he left them in a pile and ran all the way downstreet, to arrive exhausted and gagging at the busy scene of the fire.
Because he had run in fear, he was sick almost to death. The old Leah pumper blocked Water Street, its engine coughing at idle. Brass valves moved, shiny rods humped like leisurely elbows. Water dripped everywhere down its red enameled sides. Smoke, dark gray and not much of it, flew in long wisps down the street above the heads of the people he pushed through. They let him by, gazing as they were, calmly talking to each other. Down the other way the street was blue and white, shiny with the parade uniforms of the legionnaires. “Hey!” someone yelled at him. The canvas hose bulged, wanting to straighten itself but having to crimp where it twisted through the front doorway. The kitchen windows were broken, and thick smoke tumbled out to be whipped into streamers and rags. He followed the hose. “Hey! You!” they yelled imperiously. Chief Tuttle cut him off and tried to take his arm, but the old man’s hands slid off and away. He took a last breath before entering the smoke. The stink of burning cloth, of string, struck his nose even though he wouldn’t breathe. His eyes had to shut tight; immediately he collided with wet oilskins and fell into the rush of water. He fell through the parlor toward her room. Glass tinkled at all the windows. With his nose at the baseboard he got part of a breath, and as he got to his feet a fireman brushed past him, oilskins flapping. Then another. He was weaker than he thought; he had forgotten not to breathe. Susie, where was she? He fell, not aware that he was falling until his head hit the floor and the world turned fiat again. Someone had his feet. His head rattled across doorsills, slid on linoleum. The legs of a table became involved with him, then tumbled away. He swung, loose as a rope, into the light. Someone had his arm. He was on his knees, but they smothered him like wrestlers, turned him over too easily against his will and stared down at him from a great height. Their faces circled him, tilting down.
“It’s Horace Whipple,” Chief Tuttle said. Someone else knelt down and felt him over. “He’s not in bad shape,” that voice said. They all straightened up. “How’s the woman?”
“Forget it.”
“Get him across the street.”
They let him stand, but led him firmly across. He stumbled at the curb in front of Futzie’s Tavern, where on the sidewalk a mound of gray blankets lay. Near the straps and canvas, beside the kneeling uniformed men, a metal box with a red light on it pumped and wheezed. From the pile of blankets a black hand protruded, shiny and cracked as coal.
That evening the Whipples, all except Horace, had gathered in the great hall, around Harvey’s broad oak table. Their faces were constrained against the thrill of it all. Each was conscious of his own expression—noncommittal, stopped. Words seemed too clear, too calmly said.
“This will kill Horace,” Kate said.
They were silent at the wonder of it. When Wood lit his pipe they were startled by the match. He was still sick, but he wouldn’t stay upstairs.
“Poor Susie Davis,” Henrietta said.
“Poor old Sam too,” David said. “What’s he going to do now?” All their words were careful; none of them could understand why they were so excitedly pretending to be calm.
“That damned building was insured to the hilt, anyway,” Harvey said.
“How’s Horace taking it?” Peggy asked David, who had just come downstairs.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” Henrietta said, getting up.
“He wouldn’t let me in, either.”
“I’m going up again!” Henrietta said. They watched her climb the stairs. With a hand on the rail she pulled herself up, limping with tiredness.
At that moment Wood recalled that his shotgun was missing. But it had been missing last night, before this happened. He was confused. It might possibly have been a deliberate act of Horace’s toward him; perhaps it had saved his life. Because of course Horace must have the gun. Horace had been fascinated and slightly afraid of it for a long time, had even borrowed it once to try it out up behind the house. Was there anything to worry about right now—that was the question he must examine very carefully. He didn’t seem to have enough information, enough data, to make a decision about Horace and the gun. It was as if his long sleep had cut him out of time, away from all of them and their problems, and suddenly all he could think of wanting was peace. Poor Susie—it seemed that she had been lost long ago, in his or in someone else’s childhood, an old, old story. It was too late for her. Nothing could be done there. She was dead, she was in peace.
Now Peggy must stay with him and do whatever mysterious thing she did to keep him from the visions. If he touched her the visions could not happen, so he reached for her hand. She had been watching him, sensed the slight desperation in his movement toward her, and took his hand in both of hers. Her touch did more to him than he expected. He had known perfectly that she would respond; that he had known this was astounding. There had been no doubt at all. He was filled with so much knowledge of what she would do in response to him, how she would turn her head, close her eyes, move her lips. He saw it all ahead. She was smiling: the little teeth—needles in her softness. He blinked and squinted at her. How could he not believe all he knew? Those eyes were looking at him and thinking. That other intelligence! Slowly he became aware, admitted that he owned her, this other force. Need was another matter. Her taut dark skin was his, her hair, the joints of her bones. He sat dazed and still frightened, knowing that he always would be frightened, as this strange adjustment occurred before his eyes. It seemed now that he must have known this all the time, ever since she was a child.
She stood up and pulled his hands, asking him to stand. “Let’s go outside,” she said. He stood and locked his leg. The suggestion didn’t seem an unnatural one for her to make. She didn’t seem to be aware of the possibility of refusal. They had arrived, he saw at once, at their next relationship. Perhaps she had read his mind at the moment she had changed. He couldn’t define his nervousness as fear, exactly, but it was a remembered feeling—the half-joyous apprehension of too much awareness, of any heightening.
They stood in the dark on the front steps, with the wind whispering near-words through the hedges and along the grass. She put her arm around his waist, easily, naturally. That easiness shocked him into another realization: she had always been the wanton girl of his imaginings. All the time. It was strange that his protectiveness should have hidden that deeper feeling, or prediction, or perversion—whatever it was. She was the open, friendly, wanton girl that so easily broke him in his dream. No stranger at all, but his ward, part sister, part daughter. It was all uncontrollably sweet, misty, miasmic.
She turned toward him, her other arm coming around his ribs, her face against his shirt. “Everything looks different,” she said. “The lights down there. Everything. Too many things are happening.”
Harvey said, “So they were all crocked before noon.”
David and Kate nodded. They knew all those interesting, first-told details. Susie had passed out sometime toward the end of the afternoon, and the boys had left. Those names were not being given out officially—Donald Ramsey, for instance, being married. But nearly everyone knew who they were, especially since those who were legionnaires arrived fairly drunk at the Legion Drum and Bugle Corps practice. Keith Joubert, Junior Stevens and the rest. Bruce Cotter had been there too, and Herb Denney. Beady and Candy Palmer both said that it wasn’t their kind of party, that Susie had been getting crazier and crazier lately. Sam Davis was across the street in Futzie’s all day. Evidently Susie woke up long enough to light a cigarette. The damage to the apartment was mostly from smoke and water.
“So they had a little gang bang,” Harvey said. “That’s the way it all began, a long time back.”
“With Gordon Ward,” David said. “It began in high school with Gordon.” He glanced at Kate, who looked away.
Henrietta’s voice came down to them from the landing, where she stood grasping the banister rail. Her voice was weak, calmly matter-of-fact but weak, as if from age. “He doesn’t seem to be here at all,” she said. “I’ve looked everywhere for him.”
David felt danger. Kate jumped up. “Davy!” she whispered.
“Take it easy,” he said. He could think of nothing to do about it. Even if he could think of something, he wasn’t the one to do it. Asshole, fuckup. Whatever he touched got out of hand. Susie was a corpse—cold, bumed. He hadn’t been in on the cause of her ruin, but he had taken advantage of it. He shriveled, shivered at the memory of her companionable willingness. She had been a lot of fun because she knew every time was the last. She had the gaiety of despair, the sense of humor of a whore. No love possible there; it was a joke she laughed at, and the joke was always on her.
“David,” his mother called down to him. “You’ve got to find him.” Her wavery voice was on the edge. Kate ran up the stairs to her. “You’ve got to find him, David. You know, you’re the only one left who can walk. I’m so afraid of what he’ll do. He might hurt himself!”
He looked at his father, who seemed to have retired from such decisions. He stared dimly, his dark eyes like rust spots on the sickish pale skin of his head. In spite of his own fear, or because of it, David distinctly thought that he would not like to be in his father’s position right now. They were too much alike; he felt the weight of his father’s relationship with Horace all too well. He himself was not without dishonor in that respect. Also, he had a pretty good idea that Horace knew of the times he’d taken Susie to the cabin. There was that stern, broad face again, blue with cold neon, staring at him through Futzie’s window.
He did not like the memory of that judgment.
His mother still looked at him, asking him to take charge of Horace. What could he say?
“All right,” he said. Already he saw himself merely cruising around, goldbricking, safe in the cab of his truck, looking around with no real idea of finding Horace.
His father was silent.
The wind was a constant hiss in the trees. Against the moon or windowlights the leaves streamed and fluttered frantic signals, as if to warn against him. But none of Them would listen. Long ago he had found that the cruel were stupid. They were indifferent, and wouldn’t understand. Not that he hadn’t taken precautions. It was a warm night to be wearing a mackinaw, but it hid the two sections of Wood’s shotgun he had cleverly tied together so they hung on clothesline around his neck. Without untying the line he could lift it over his head, fit the barrel to the action with a quick twist, then feed the shells from his pocket into the magazine. Now he walked, without visible agitation, down High Street to the left, the back way to the Town Square. They would soon discover his absence and might try pursuit. David in his truck, of course, but David would go down Bank Street. They were all so stupid. If they were not stupid they would see him burning bright as a torch along the dark streets.
The warm houselights were the deceptions they put on like smiles. If you looked closely, past the thin lace veils of those windows, just as you might look into a smile to see the cruelty, you saw the cold people. They were all enemies, laughing among themselves at Susie, at himself. They thought it thrilling to see her destruction. At his own dinner table he had once heard them snicker and call her names. The names were true, of course, according to their judgments, and could not be answered in their language. He could not call them wrong.
Up the street a car began to turn toward him, but before its lights came around he stepped smoothly into a lilac bush to watch it come blazing arrogantly toward him and pass with its swish of engine and tires. Hung around his neck he had the power to stop anything. He had seen what Wood’s shotgun could do. One shot had cut down a poplar sapling three inches in diameter, blown its white pulpy wood into gruel.
He would make her death a little more important. There was a kind of justice they didn’t understand, not having gone to hell and seen the resemblance between their indifference and hell’s indifference. He was scourged, free, shining. He had outfaced Leverah and the Herpes, wept for their victims but not become one. Nothing left on earth could frighten him as badly as the Herpes had frightened him. Now he had no one to protect, so he was free. They had no hostages now. Wood no longer cared, Kate had been taken and turned, Peggy was lost in poor broken Wood, Susie was dead.
He fell to the ground beside a white garage—the Martins’ garage. Giant rhubarb leaves, the furry smell of rhubarb, covered him. With his face on the cool earth, he was a part of that forest. He could mourn quietly because he was free. A car passed with a familiar clank of metal—David’s truck. This would hurt his mother, and he was sorry for that, but no one else would do what had to be done. She would get over it soon because after tonight she would never have to worry about him again. He would never have to see her face break into fragments again, nor see her big eyes glaze and shake behind her glasses. He wanted no pity and had never asked it of them. Only in the coldest fear had he ever asked for it, and then, to his shame, it had been from Zoster and the Herpes. They had made him whimper as his father had once made him whimper, asking for fairness, that child’s cry. Let them ask him for fairness now. Let them complain that it wasn’t fair.
He took the cinder alley to Union Street, crossed Maple Street to avoid a woman who walked a small, brittle-legged dog, and turned east on Locust Street. Lights were on in the basement of the Methodist Church, where women washed pots and dishes down there in the brightness. He would have to cross Summerslee Street to get into the darkness behind the grammar school. Then he would be among the gravestones and the arbor vitae, whose formal lanes would take him up behind the Congregational Church and the Wards’ house. He was sweating now—a hazard because his glasses fogged and became slippery over his ears and nose. He stopped in a shadow and hastily wiped them with his handkerchief.
As he crossed Summerslee Street a car caught him unexpectedly in its headlights. It must have turned out from a side street. He kept himself from running, and it passed, not seeming to care, its taillights narrowing steadily south. The worn playground brought memories of degradation. The great tube of the fire-escape slide came like an arm akimbo from the second story of the dark school. Once in fire drill he had slid into its hollow and been deposited on the ground, still among strangers. In this building he had broken Mabel Andrews’ tooth and nearly died of shame and horror that his touch could hurt her. His life had ripped apart like cloth when she screamed, and after that she had to wear a false tooth forever. All the rest of her life that artificial part of her would be in view because of him.
He climbed the wooden fence and dropped onto the smooth grass of the cemetery. This time his touch would be for justice, not for love. Following the odd lines of shadows, he crouched and moved quietly over the tended lawn between the stones. He was not a person, not even an animal, but the force of justice moving with perfect authority toward its culmination.
Voices murmured from his left, and he crouched behind a block of polished granite smooth as glass. Along the ground, not too far away, came the harsh pun of a man, then the higher one of a girl, a hummed assent, over and over: ‘Turn yum yum yum.” Absorbed in their noises, they wouldn’t hear him pass. Further on he had to cross a graveled path, the crunch of his shoes half taken by the wind, then onto dark lawn again. The white steeple of the Congregational Church was outlined in pink by the store lights across the square. To its right the gables of the Wards’ house crouched among the elms, black from this side. He stopped to listen; a cricket ticked next to his hand. It was here somewhere, among these graves, Gordon had offered Susie to his teammates. He saw their hard, handsome faces, their thick necks. Gordon’s orange freckles glowed. He could hear their exuberant, stifled voices as they watched each other mount the girl.
It was that betrayal he’d lived over and over. She had come to Gordon’s house, thinking she would meet his parents, that she was serious to Gordon. “Mother, Father, this is Susan Davis.” “How do you do, my dear?” She had told him what Gordon promised. Her aspirations—what a joke. He groaned for pity of her trust. No parents were home, but the football players giggled manfully in the barn or somewhere. She said she wore a pretty dress.
No more. Beneath a tall blue spruce he assembled Wood’s shotgun and loaded five of the number-six shells into the magazine, pumped one into the chamber and slid one more into the magazine. No one heard the clash of the metal. As he moved toward the barn-garage he held the gun, barrel-down, alongside his leg. From shadow to shadow he slid, a shadow himself, to the dark along the wooden wall. Sweet peas on their strings swayed like marionettes, and somewhere a door bumped and creaked in the wind. A glassless window passed like a mouth, revealing a darkness inside so palpable it seemed to bulge softly, like velvet. He waited for a cloud to cross the moon before going around the corner. The first cloud turned silver and rushed by, missing the moon, so he waited. On such a warm night people might be sitting in the dark on the porch next door. He had no fear of them because he was the power here. He had no need of fear or rage; he merely regretted their coldness. They felt pain—their own pain, that is—and he had no desire to give pain or to make anyone fear him. So he was careful not to involve the neighbors in Gordon’s execution. They would know about it soon enough.
When the clouds came over the moon he slipped into the garage. If Gordon’s car was not here, he would wait. In the darkness he felt around for the cars. He could smell them, almost feel them in his head. An emptiness there ahead of him—he could feel it, or hear it. But there, to the right, something took up space. He touched its smooth enamel and ran his hand up its side. The grainy texture of canvas made it Gordon’s convertible.
He had been in the Wards’ house several times, and knew the downstairs part of it well. The back hall led past several pantries into the kitchen. All right. He crossed the driveway and entered the house. It had seemed that he was totally committed to what he must do, but now, in the house itself, among its own odors and vibrations, there was a new intensity of purpose. The kitchen overhead light was on, but he walked casually through that busy room. Stove, refrigerator, sink—they seemed needless now, and unsubstantial. He stepped into the unlighted dining room, hearing a voice. Two steps down from the dining room, at the hall telephone, Gordon leaned against the wall. He was relaxed, even happy in his posture, making a comma against the wall. His white shirt was too clean, his chinos and loafers too new and crisp. His hair flamed into thousands of tight curls and angles.
“Okay, what time you want to start?” said Gordon’s easy voice. “Yeah, yeah,” he said with a wry grin, “we’ll make it a sort of wake. Hmm? I’ll bring a couple new decks of Bicycles and take out of the pot. You get the beer. Okay, Don? Nine o’clock? Okay, Donny-boy.” He listened. “Okay now, cut the humor.” But he chuckled again, shaking his head in mock disapproval.
Behind Gordon, at this angle, stood a tall grandfather clock with a sailing ship painted on its glass panel. The pendulum, a dull sun of brass, appeared and disappeared behind Gordon’s crisply pressed chinos. The telephone table stood on delicate carved legs. Everything here was old, thin and carefully polished. The beige wallpaper was etched like brocade, all tiny flowers in vertical lines.
Gordon hung up and turned, reaching for his wallet. With his finger he examined its insides, fingering his money. Then he put it back in his pocket and looked up at Horace. He was badly startled, dead pale between his freckles. He squinted up into the dining room. “Who’s that?” he said. “Is somebody standing there, for Christ’s sake?” He took two steps forward, craning his neck. “Jesus Christ! Somebody is standing there! Say something!”
Horace had nothing to say.
“What do you want?” Gordon said. He reached for the wall switch and turned on the chandelier over the table. “Horace Whipple!” he said, and jumped back when he saw the gun. “What the hell!”
Horace pushed off the safety, and Gordon jumped again at that meaningful click. “Hey, wait a minute, Horace! What’s with the gun?” He was so badly frightened his forehead began to glisten. He put his hand to his heart and took short, hard breaths. “Jesus, you gave me a start. Now, what’s with the blunderbuss? Come on, Horace, what’s the story?”
As if he really wanted to know. In Gordon’s wary eye Horace saw a flicker of plan. He had decided that he probably wouldn’t get shot, that he would be dead already if he were going to be shot. “I mean, what’s the matter, Horace?”
“Susie’s dead.” Horace spoke only out of politeness.
“Oh, yeah. Terrible! That’s awful. Terrible thing. But you don’t blame me for that, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Aw, no, Horace. No you don’t, not really. I mean I know how bad you feel and all. All upset, right? It’s a terrible thing! Who could blame you?” Gordon’s voice was kind and sad, his face serious, avuncular. He seemed to think he was doing pretty well.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Horace said.
Gordon immediately misunderstood. “Of course not, Horace! I can see that! Come on in and let’s sit down. Come on.”
Horace despaired of their ever changing, the cold ones.
“At least put the safety back on, huh?” Gordon essayed a smile. “Okay, Horace?”
If only there was a chance for Gordon.
“Well, okay, Horace. We’ll stand here and talk. You know, I feel terrible about Susie too. We were damned good friends, you know. Old friends, in spite of whatever you think might have happened way back in high school. Don’t believe everything you hear, Horace. You know how everything gets exaggerated. Don’t you?” The green-flecked eyes glittered uncomfortably as he looked for some sign. Then they peered straight into the barrel of the shotgun, flickering shut and open. “You know how that happens, don’t you?” He tried to wave all that gossip away with his hand, to wave it off into utter insignificance.
The mind shifted, probing. Gordon turned fiercely sad. “You have no idea, Horace, how much I’ve suffered over an awful drunken mistake I once made. I was too young to drink, and just couldn’t know what I was doing. I was absolutely pie-eyed, didn’t know what was happening one night, when those drunken bastards found Susie and me and did that to her. Honest to God! I know somehow it was my fault—to get so drunk I couldn’t protect her. God knows I tried, but they held me back. God, it was awful!” His mood changed to understanding, warmth, confiding warmth. “And don’t think I don’t know how upset you were when you heard the rumors, either, Horace. Taking the money and all. A brave thing. I thought it was a brave thing to do!”
That strange quality of lies, how the open brain clicked and telegraphed its points.
He went on, speaking most plausibly to whatever he thought Horace Whipple was. Horace watched down the barrel of the shotgun as the bright face proclaimed its openness. The honest gestures flowed down the shoulders through the snowy broadcloth of the shirt toward the light square hands. He had to admire certain of those skills. The room around Gordon faded until he seemed to stand in a special light. Gordon explained with becoming modesty how he had fought in the war, gone through sheer hell in the service of his country. Then a modest shrug before he returned to the deep seriousness of the tragedy of Susie’s death. Sorrow, shock. A moment of silence.
Gordon glanced at his wrist watch. Perhaps he still wanted to make that poker game. Yes, he probably did; he was thinking ahead. A self-deprecating slyness entered Gordon’s expression, as though he were asking if it showed too much: “Hey, Horace? Is that gun really loaded? I never thought you were the hunting type. You know what I mean?”
Did the man think he was playing poker already? This man, Horace saw too clearly, would be successful in the world. His little talents would hurt many before he was through. Even afterward the poisonous lessons of his success would remain. The stupid gulling the stupider, the power of minor cunning. He hadn’t Horace’s education in evil, and was therefore hardly aware of his tools, of their origins. These were not the tools he had used on Susie, though he didn’t know it. He had used her love. And of course they couldn’t work on Horace. Gordon’s fear was real, and gave him reason to scheme, but he was also depending upon Horace’s reluctance to kill—an interesting card to hold.
Let him dig his grave.
“Why don’t you say something, Horace?”
“I could never gamble,” Horace said. Once David had tried to teach him how to play poker, but he could never lie about the cards he held, or understand why the other person enjoyed the necessity of lying. David had informed him that he was slightly mad, slightly un-American. He moved the barrel up, so Gordon had to look straight down the hole.
“Horace, I think there’s something else you ought to know about Susie.” Horace watched him with curiosity because his method had changed again. Gordon was serious, rather manly, rather sad about what he had to say. “I suppose you don’t know that…that time, you know, wasn’t really the first time anything like that happened to poor Susie. Now don’t get upset about what I have to say. But Susie was not—I’m sorry to say this—a virgin when that unfortunate thing happened.” Gordon smiled them into a slight conspiracy of knowledge: men of the world, they could shrug sadly at human foibles. “Now, I know how you felt about her! Don’t get me wrong. She was a sweet kid, one of the nicest persons there ever was, anywhere. She just…well, it had been that way with Susie for a long time. Horace?” He was gravely serious now. “Do you know what a nymphomaniac is?”
Gordon wasn’t even aware of the nature of his crime, had no idea why he was being judged.
“Well, Susie had a kind of mental disease called nymphomania. I hate to say it, Horace, but that’s the way it was. You won’t get mad, now, if I explain what it is? Okay? By the way, if you decide to put that safety back on, be careful, huh? I mean don’t pull the trigger by mistake? Okay? Well, nymphomaniacs just have to sleep with everybody that comes along. It’s not their fault, now. Remember that! It’s a disease. You know Susie’s mother’s in Concord. You knew that. Well, there’s a history of mental illness in the family, you know.” He shook his head sadly.
Gordon had been sweating, but now he was full of confidence, for some reason. It began to seem dangerous, just a little dangerous. Gordon peered carefully out of his head, seeming to see great results Horace couldn’t see. His hair gleamed like red metal, and his big chest expanded with confidence. Freckles overlapped like plates upon his face and hands. It must have been that name for her that had generated such confidence. Horace raised the shotgun.
“Horace! What the hell? Are you crazy?”
Yes, he was mad. The man he knew to be Gordon Ward had become for an instant Zoster. Chitin slid, smooth sheaths along the jaws. The red was the blood of victims, the green eyes were cold as absolute zero. Horace had never chosen to guard against them. He wanted to explain it all to Susie, how they would come to suck her warmth, how they liked torture. He had never told her about the flayed dog screaming for its skin. They were power, the ones who always had the power, didn’t she understand? They could kill her any way they chose and never be made to suffer. He must warn her about them again. He saw her lying in her sleep, so frail, no lock on the door. Their grins, bloated parts, teeth, smirks, cold armor. It was almost too late. It was hard, what he had to do. He had almost died of fright at the unnaturalness when he ran at Leverah’s window, staring with his open eyes. She fell, exploding in blood and her own terror. It was hard to do, wrong to do. Unnatural. But they made these rules, not he. Anticipating attack or flight, he quickly fired into the head of this one.
As the big body jackknifed, part of the head pushed off toward the wall. Long ropes and finer bells of blood painted the wallpaper, lay ribbon like along the floor. He had expected power from Wood’s shotgun, but the head! Pieces of scalp still grew orange hair. Pinkish-gray cereal gleamed on the carpet, crawled down a table leg.
In the silence of the gaudy hallway he remembered who he was and saw what he had done.