39

Men climbed toward me, up the hill. Flashlight beams danced. There was a labored hunch to the way most of them ran, cradling shotguns. They made no effort to be quiet, fallen branches snapping underfoot.

It was wonderful to see him: Joe Timm was in the lead, out of breath. He nearly stumbled on the roots of a tree, keeping himself upright by seizing a branch. He turned to direct his men to fan out. I saw as never before how determined Joe Timm was. It was not bluff. It was a quality he had, like acute hearing: fear meant little to him.

But a few of my pursuers had heard her, too. They slowed, stopped, confused. You could see them eager to stay where they were, safe among the trees, and not return to the graveside, not hurry onward after me.

I won’t hurt you, Joe.

I sent this thought without intending to. Joe stopped running, twitching the flashlight beam into the branches above, and back to the pebbles at his feet.

“Richard?” he rasped.

I intended to be reassuring. I will do you no harm.

He put his hand to his hat, tugging the brim. He let the beam of light play slowly, like a man watering a lawn. Had he heard her, too? Was this why he insisted on marching up the hill—so he could pretend reality was not unravelling?

No harm.

He took another step, straining forward, trying to see where I was. His shaft of light nearly found me. I was about to speak to him, to use my voice.

“Richard, it’s wrong!” he called. “What you’re doing is wrong!” His light lost itself overhead, in the trees.

I felt a twinge of fellowship. I wanted to ask him how his bonsais were, his dwarf maples and pines. I wanted to ask how his wife was doing, her heart. Already I was streaking across the hillside, dodging trees. I could not stay here a moment longer.

“It’s not going to be as easy as you think!” Joe Timm called. “We’re going to run you to the ground!”

This last rhetorical flourish was for the benefit of his men. There was something artificial about Joe Timm’s behavior. Joe Timm alone would be a more quietly stubborn adversary. As long as he led other men he would feel the need to call out, to be seen.

It was easy to elude Joe and his police academy graduates. The most perceptive of them were baffled, heads together, uncertain. The more dogged, and less alert, were already thrashing the weeds in the undeveloped land. A bird startled by their passage broke from branch to branch, high in the trees.

I slipped into a dry stream bed, and followed the fold in the hillside down, in the opposite direction, back to the asphalt road. Two uniformed officers stood beside a car, and they did not see me as I sailed past. Was I a winged creature, or did I run on two legs, or four? I could not tell, and it no longer mattered.

There, you see, I mocked myself. My mind was teasing me, my hope coining counterfeits. I knelt at the grave. How many times have we heard someone call our name and looked back, only to see a stranger beckoning to another stranger, arms out to him, an embrace. It was one form of wisdom almost every human attains—to expect disappointment, to tolerate it, to sail forth on diminished expectations.

The casket was broken. I began to see, not to anticipate. I began to perceive what was before my eyes. The satin of the interior was pale, freckled with mildew and clots of earth. The grave was empty.

She called me again.

Her voice came from far away. I ran hard down the hill, then stretched into wing, soaring over statuary, gravestones and crosses. She was nowhere. There was only the still magic of the dark.

When I saw her at last she was a small white puppet curled into a hollow. I hovered over her, and knelt. I was afraid to look at her.

I reached forth my hand, tentative, disbelieving. She was warm. I touched my lips to hers and she was breathing. I gathered her into my arms.

I soothed back her hair and gazed at her. Already there was color and movement, her lips, her fingers. Gradually I let myself feel the first happiness. The police were lost, thrashing through poison oak, far up the hillside. The whisper of her gown was the only sound, that and my footsteps as I strode through a bed of nasturtiums, the green vines snaking across a sidewalk.

Her voice was a whisper. “Richard!”

“I’m here,” I said. I wanted to add, Everything’s all right but emotion made it impossible.

Her calls to me had ruined her voice and she could only whisper, “Richard, where are you?” She clung to me, hard.

I wanted to tell her I was holding her. I wanted to tell her we were together again. But I had to hurry. There was that familiar stirring in the air. A window across the street was suddenly a source of light, and a man parted the curtains. The sky was no longer simple dark. A cloud was taking on an outline, rose, egg-yellow, chalk blue.

I tilted a manhole cover, and dragged the big steel dish into the street. I lowered her into the round hole, and climbed down after her. I pulled the lid carefully back into place.

“Where is he?” she said, flinging one arm out into the darkness. She struggled.

I tried to tell her that we were safe.

“The house is burning!” she said.

“No one can hurt us here,” I said.

“Richard, there’s a fire,” she said, controlling her fear.

“No,” I said soothingly. “We’re in no danger—”

“Save yourself!” she cried.

“The fire is out, Rebecca,” I said. I laughed tenderly. “It’s been out for a long time. The man who wanted to hurt you is dead.”

I almost said: the man who killed you.

She touched my face. She touched my tears. She tried to kiss them away, but I turned my head. She was innocent of everything I had done. As joyous as I was, I knew the truth.

“Richard,” she whispered. “I thought I would never see you again.”

She wore a long, flowing gown, the fabric stiff with moisture, foxing. It was the sort of dress she would have worn for a recital, and even stained and soiled it was elegant. She became strengthless in my arms again, and I kissed her eyelids, hoping she could not sense my doubt.

I recognized the sleep that claimed her, the solemn torpor. “My God,” I breathed, the words sing-song in my wonderment, my happiness, my fear. “What have I done?”

But she was here with me, now, and I would not lose her again. I carried her gently. The drain was corrugated metal, and I eased her along through the tunnel until we reached another chamber, this one smaller and crowded with pipejoints and metal housing for what I guessed was electronic equipment.

We slept there, among the rust and slowly dripping water. Sometimes a clang would reach my consciousness, a car running over the manhole cover. In my haste, I had replaced the cover imperfectly. It was loose, and every time a car ran over it the iron disk rang, an ugly, sour bell.

At some point during the day the manhole cover was pried free. Steps descended the ladder, splashed in the trickle of water. Voices echoed. I had the vague sense that a beam of light was stretching out along the drainpipe, the beam weak by the time it reached our hiding place.

I heard it, a voice in a dream. Joe Timm’s voice, exhausted. “They could be anywhere.”