“People you know?”
“No. Just all of them.”
“Marie. That’s not true. It can’t be true.”
“I know, but I can’t help it.”
The chief of police sat stumped. What could he do? A burn -
ing compassion for this girl came over him, yet he could not still in him a raging revulsion. Goddamn! He knew now why Tommy had fled. To flee was natural, and Tommy’s feelings had been natural. As natural as his were.
“Marie.”
She did not answer; he could see the muscles quivering in her throat.
“Marie, listen to me.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I want to help you,” he told her.
“No. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
“No. Listen. I’ve just been appointed chief of police in Brentwood Park,” he told her. “And I’ll have extra money. I want to give you twenty dollars a week, money enough for your treatments, see?”
“No.”
“Yes. Don’t be foolish.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I want to help,” he declared.
A Fa t h e r ’s L a w
121
“Did Tommy send you?”
“No. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Does his mother know?”
“No. No one knows but me.”
She sat silent.
“I’m no good,” she breathed.
“You are. We must save you,” he swore.
“Just leave me alone. When I see those I used to know, I feel that I’m being unjustly judged,” she whimpered. “Oh, why did this have to happen to me? What have I ever done? This hurt fell on me for nothing?”
“Marie, did you ever try to trace with your father and his father how you could have caught this?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“My father’s father had it. My father has it.”
“Your mother?”
“Strangely, no.”
“Is your father being treated?”
“Yes. But maybe it is too late for him.”
“What did the doctor say about you?”
“I’m being cured,” she said.
“There. You see. Everything will come out all right.” He tried to encourage her. “Now, look, I’m”—he ran his hand into his pocket and pulled forth some money—“I’m giving you this now.
Two hundred dollars. Enough for twenty weeks. After that—”
“You shouldn’t do this, Mr. Turner,” she objected. “You make me feel even worse.”
“I want to do this.”
“Is Tommy getting married?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Has Tommy told anybody about this?”
122
R i c h a rd W r i g h t
“No. Not even his mother. And he told me only yesterday, when I forced him to.”
“Oh.” She sighed.
Ruddy understood. Marie was thinking that his offer of help was a bribe for her to remain silent for the sake of Tommy’s future. A stab of pain stitched at his heart. Dirt bred dirt.
Jesus Christ. Yet, in her sense of abandoment and degradation, it was a natural thing for her to think. It was as natural for her to think that as it had been for Tommy to flee from her presence.
“I’m giving you this because I want to help you,” he spoke simply. “I know it’s hard for you to believe that, but it’s true.”
“If I thought otherwise, I’d hate you for the rest of my life,”
she said with sudden, hard bitterness.
“You’d be right,” he said. “But this money is clean. It’s from my heart.”
“All right,” she said.
He laid the roll on the bed, not daring to wish to put it into her hand.
“Oh, Marie, life is hard,” he half moaned, feeling hot tears stinging his eyes.
“I wanted to kill, just to kill anybody, everybody, when I knew what had happened to me,” she said.
“Medicine now can cure you.” He tried to encourage her. “It is not like in the old days when illnesses like that were thought of as horrible. It is a moral feeling—”
“It is horrible, ” she insisted. “I saw it in Tommy’s eyes. I see it in yours. And in my mother’s eyes. Everybody’s eyes.”
What could he say to her? She was right. No matter how quickly she was healed, she was poisoned in the minds of others and, above all, in her own mind. Never in one lifetime could it be gotten rid of. And how contagious was the feeling that she
A Fa t h e r ’s L a w
123
had in her. That feeling was composed of germs more powerful than the ones that flowed in her veins. It made one shrink, in spite of one’s self. Hovering in Ruddy’s mind was an allusion that Marie had made to crime. She had said that what had happened to her had made her want to kill. God, no. But, maybe, yes. When you were unjustly condemned by those around you, you wanted to hit out at everybody, at a world that held and nourished and poisoned your life. Yes, but that was only a tem-porary reaction, he told himself. How lucky Tommy escaped.
Suppose he had married the girl and had then found it out?
That boy would have gone crazy, he thought.
“Thank you, Mr. Turner,” he heard Marie whispering.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I only knew about it today. Or I would have come sooner. You and Tommy are children. You were hurt, through no fault of your own. I’d have been here sooner, had I known. You must learn to trust life again, Marie.
All is not over for you. You’ll be cured. I’m certain of that. Then I want to see you and try to help you figure out a life.”
“Thank you,” she said, her eyes lowered.
“And if you ever want anything, call me at my offi ce in Brentwood Park,” Ruddy told her.
He stretched out his hand to her. He saw her staring at it, then she took it, without rising, and pressed it, then let it fall.
“Good-bye, Marie,” he said.
She did not answer. He went out, and when he reached the dark, lamp-lit streets, he seemed to be entering a world fi lled with bright sunshine. He knew that this illusion was caused by the deep sense of oppressive suffocation that he had had when talking to Marie. He seated himself behind the wheel of his car, and for a reason he did not know, he lifted from the glove compartment an insignia of the police department and affixed it to the windshield. Why had he done that now? He
124
R i c h a rd W r i g h t
was frightened and he wanted the protection of the power of his office. He drove slowly on, not in any particular direction.
What a goddamn rotten world, he muttered between his teeth.
It’d make you kill, for sure. Kill like that killer in the woods of Brentwood Park. He slowed the car and pulled to a curb. Why in the name of God had he thought of that? I’m nervous, he said. I’m acting now as though I was sick. He shook his head and swallowed. Never, since he had been in the service of the department of the police, had anything like this even remotely touched his life. And he admittedly did not know how to react.
Until now he had always found some way to convince himself that those who were caught in the meshes of the law or who were in trouble, had only themselves at bottom to blame. But how could he blame Marie? Or Tommy? No, he could not. Goddamnit, life is tough sometimes.
C H A P T E R 1 1
Chief Turner’s usually unruffl ed feelings had been swept by a dark storm of emotion that left him wondering and half afraid. His traditionally rigid view of the world, a view outlined and buttressed by the law, had been shattered in a manner that did not allow him to set it right again. Here was no simple question of man against the law but of suffering in-flicted by vast and mysterious powers outside of and above the law. It was not a question of the so-called unwritten law that was bothering him but maybe of a higher law that overruled or could overrule the law he knew and executed. Who or what wa
s responsible for what had happened to Tommy and Marie?
Ruddy understood the so-called acts of God, such as storms, tidal waves, earthquakes, and he knew that most people were prepared, however reluctantly, to accept them, to bow their heads before them, to mumble a silent yes with teary-eyed sorrow. He now remembered something that Tommy had years ago said to him; he had asked Tommy some question about how a man could suffer so silently and Tommy had said, quot-ing an English poet—what had been his name? Black, Burke, Blake, or what?—that “a hurt worm forgives the plow.” That
126
R i c h a rd W r i g h t
was true. But in the give and take of human life, what on earth was a plow? A storm? Something that came from outside human life and society? Or could it be something that fl owed with the blood in human veins and was transmitted in the act of life, the defenseless act of giving with arms wrapped about a desired body? It was that “love” aspect that presented the problem! The hurt that had come had descended not with violence, not with assault, not with theft, but when all human defenses were down and the heart was open. A man who had dealt unfairly with you, had caused you suffering, loss, and pain, could perhaps be understood and maybe, under some circumstances, be forgiven. Insurance companies indemni-fied you for damages sustained when storms struck you or fi re wiped out your home. But who was to blame for the hurt sustained by the Maries and Tommys who innocently and buoyed by love were made victims of forces beyond their control? “It’s the goddamnest thing I ever heard of,” he spoke aloud. “Glad Tommy escaped being infected . . .” His throat tightened. But Tommy had not escaped. He had walked around the physical disease, but he had undoubtedly been touched and tainted by the aura of evil that wafted that disease along. Tommy had not been ill and Tommy had not married the girl. Tommy had left the girl alone to fend for herself, and he had been too ashamed to tell even his father what had happened. No, Tommy had not escaped, not really. “Tommy would have done wrong no matter what he did,” he muttered. “It’s goddamn unfair.” His unblinking eyes roved unseeingly upon the passersby thronging the sidewalks. Well, he had done what he could for poor Marie, and he could and would do more. When she was cured and able to mingle again with people, he would help her to get a job somewhere. She was bright, and a good job with good pay would help her to become emotionally fit and would help
A Fa t h e r ’s L a w
127
her to forget. Forget? Could she ever forget that? Never heard of an accident like that. Tommy did not deserve that. It must have made him burn inside . . . or freeze.
He sighed. “Don’t know what I would do in a case like that.” Ruddy’s fingers, tan and stiff, gripped the steering wheel with murderous intensity. Gradually his emotions cooled and calmed. Well, he’d go home now. No, he did not want to. And he didn’t wish to see a movie either. He was tired but restless, nervously taut but not sleepy. And he did not relish seeing or talking to Agnes just now. Then, from out of the depths of him, there flashed the vague and comforting image of an offi ce, his office, the official home he had out there in far-off Brentwood Park. He glanced at his wristwatch; it was a quarter past nine.
Yeah, I’ll drop in there. And I’ll go by way of those woods above Brentwood Park.
He reversed the direction of his car at an intersection and rolled swiftly forward. He was now psychologically organized again, a policeman on duty, an effi cient officer upholding the law, an offi cer on a mission, on guard, alert. Twenty minutes later, he turned and took the road whose sign read: BRENTWOOD PARK, 10
MILES. The road rose in the warm spring night, stretching ahead between far-flung and rising yellow streetlamps, whose glow was misty like blobs of shimmering gold. Ten minutes later he was atop the vast and sloping hill, staring down at the oblong shape of the town of Brentwood Park, its outline marked by yellow lights that glimmered. He slowed, turning, following the roadway, and began the long descent till the streetlamps were no more. Yeah, I’ll get this place lit up; that’s the fi rst thing I’ll order done. How fine the air smelled up here! How cool and clear was the scent of the looming black pine trees! And how calm and silent were the woods! It seemed impossible that three atrocious murders had taken place in these surroundings, that five people had lost their
128
R i c h a rd W r i g h t
lives. Yet the thick foliage made him know that such a landscape offered criminal possibilities galore. What was a paradise for some was a hell for others. Yeah, a bushwhacker could thrive up here.
He slowed the car to five miles an hour; yes, he could see a few people out strolling even on this dark, starless, moonless night.
Couples arm-in-arm passed him, talking in low tones. “Even fi ve murders can’t help ’em out of here,” he mumbled in amazement.
Everybody thought that they could not be killed; their neighbors could be, their friends, even their fathers and mothers, but they themselves were immune. Ruddy was familiar with that feeling in his police work. Cops never really believed the bullets of the killers would reach them, for, if they did, they would be as frightened as the killers. A sudden impulse made him pull his car over onto a stretch of wide gravel that soft-shouldered the road and stop.
He doused his lights, sat back, lit a cigarette, puffed, but hid the glowing tip between each inhalation and exhalation. He was still about two minutes when he heard a sound; his ears pricked up.
Footsteps were slowly approaching his car—the kind of footsteps that bushwhackers used. His right hand snaked lightning-like to his gun, and in a second he had it in readiness and was peering about over his shoulder while he crushed out his cigarette into the car’s ashtray. Yeah, somebody was creeping toward him. Was this it? He strained his eyes. God, it was a white face! And though he did not know it, he was surprised to know that the possible attacker was a white man. Who in hell is this? The face came closer and closer. Ruddy flung open the car door and demanded harshly:
“Stand where you are!”
“Hey, what’re you doing here?” the white face challenged him.
“Who are you?” Ruddy demanded, swinging the police spotlight round and full into the man’s face.
“Hey, you’re blinding me . . . don’t do that!” the white face shouted.
A Fa t h e r ’s L a w
129
“Put your hands up and come closer,” Ruddy snapped softly. “I’ve got you covered with a gun. Be careful.” He sighted along his revolver straight in the direction of the man’s heart.
A pair of long arms lifted into the darkness and the blinking white face came nearer.
“Who are you? What’re you doing out here?” Ruddy asked.
“I’m Dr. Louis Redfield,” the man stammered.
“What’re you doing sneaking up on my car?”
“I-I t-thought you were a prowler,” the man stammered.
“That’s hot,” Ruddy said, relaxing. “A prowler prowling at cars and looking for prowlers, eh?”
“But . . . I . . . who are you?”
“Come closer,” Ruddy ordered. “And keep your hands up!”
“Don’t hurt me, Mister,” the man begged in a trembling tone.
“I’m a policeman,” Ruddy informed him, alighting from the car now. “I’m not satisfied with what you told me about sneaking up on my car.”
“Oh, you’re the police,” the man said in a tone of deep relief. Ruddy took the spotlight out of the man’s face now. “Aw, yes, an officer. Thank God. I thought you had cornered me. You see, sir, we’ve got an unofficial posse patrolling these woods at night since all of those terrible crimes were committed. We’re searching for those murderers.”
“An amateur detective, eh?”
“Sort of,” the man apologized with a sheepish smile.
“Where do you live?”
“92 Edgeware Avenue, Brentwood Park.”
“Where do you work?”
“I teach at the University of Chicago.”
“You’re a professor there???
?
“Yes, Offi cer.”
130
R i c h a rd W r i g h t
“You know, I can check that.”
“I’m assistant head of the department of sociology there,”
the man explained.
“Oh!”
“It’s true,” the man insisted.
“Did you know Detective Heard’s son, who went to school there?” Ruddy asked.
“I heard of ’im,” the man said. “He was not in any class I taught.”
“Step closer to me and still keep your hands high,” Ruddy ordered.
The professor came so close that Ruddy could feel his hot breath on his cheek. Then Ruddy quickly patted the man’s pockets, hips, and felt along his legs for weapons.
“Okay. You can drop your hands,” Ruddy said.
“I’m not armed,” the man protested.
“They all say that.”
Ruddy slid his gun back into its holster.
“I was really looking for—”
“I think you ought to go home and go to bed,” Ruddy told him. “And leave law enforcement to the police department.”
“Yes, Offi cer.”
“You own a car?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“About half a mile from here.”
“Show me your driver’s license.”
The man fumbled in his pockets, and Ruddy pressed even closer to him, so close that if the man had suddenly drawn a hidden gun, Ruddy could have seized his arm.
“Here it is, sir.”
Ruddy examined the document and handed it back.
A Fa t h e r ’s L a w
131
“Okay, Professor. I think you can go home and tell your friends, if any are out here, to go home too,” Ruddy said.
“Yes, Offi cer.”
The man started off.
“Say,” Ruddy called.
The man turned and walked back.
“You said that you were in the department of sociology.”
“Yes, Offi cer.”
“Well, I want to ask you a few questions. You know this town well?”
“Oh, like a book. In fact, I’ve written a book on it.”
“You know these woods well?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know all the paths leading in and out of here?”