She enjoyed repeating the earlier announcement that nobody wanted to go out to dinner.
In his brightening state E.G. said, “I figured that might be the case. This has been a hard day on all of us. So I brought back a big steak a guy was aging for me. It’s got to be two inches thick.”
“Nobody wants to eat” Esther said, though Orrie had not gone so far as that.
It was some satisfaction to see the spark go out of his eye once again. “Everybody’s got to eat some time.” He glanced resentfully at the ceiling. “Hell, they didn’t see him for four years. There’s no difference in their lives.” He got up from the chair beside the drum table, that which Esther had lately used when in the living room, though she would not have called it “her” chair, having little feeling of proprietorship for particular inanimate objects: that was a male emotion. As soon as he went into the Army, she had thrown out Augie’s chair, a thick, graceless leather thing in which he sat to brood about the raw deal he had got from life. Esther was proud of her gift for interior decoration. With any encouragement she might have made a career of it, but there had never been enough money to purchase the fine things with which she could furnish only the rooms of fantasy.
E.G. went to the kitchen and came back with a bottle of whiskey, which he displayed to her as though it were a new baby. “Red Label. Prewar. Years since you could find that in any liquor store.” He used a thumbnail on the seal. “There hasn’t been a time throughout the war I couldn’t lay my hands on meat, gas, booze, and I got a whole set of new tires in the middle of ‘forty-two, if you recall. The rationing didn’t slow me down any.”
“While Augie was dodging German bullets,” Esther said, though in a nonjudgmental tone.
“Or so he claimed anyway.”
“He was wearing the medals to prove it.”
“Hell,” E.G. said, “you can buy a chestful of those on any street corner in the country.” He gestured loosely. “Go get glasses and ice. And that bottle of club soda on the sink.”
She had vowed to stop serving him but, with the children upstairs, did not want to start a row.
She returned from the kitchen to see that he had not only opened the Scotch but had apparently already drunk some of it from the bottle, which was empty to well below the neck. She had never, over the years, known him to be a drinker. That was Augie’s vice.
“He wouldn’t even sell me that picture,” E.G. said. “I sincerely offered to buy it.”
“What picture?”
“The dog.” He seized a glass from her and splashed Scotch into it, holding onto the bottle when done.
“You want ice?” It was in a bowl, on the tray with the bottle of soda.
He ignored the question. “I can’t let him move up to the attic. He’ll resent me more than ever.”
Esther lowered the tray to the coffee table. She had brought no glass for herself. She had no interest in E.G.’s supposedly paternal feelings.
“I’ve been thinking,” said he. “It’s been eating at me. It’s the only thing that could justify the other night —”
She jerked her head in fear and chagrin, violently pointing at the ceiling.
He poured himself a refill. “I guess I just thought you weren’t really serious at first, but one thing led to another and on and on —”
In a strident whisper she said, “Will you shut up! Voices carry in this house.”
“Nuh-no,” said he, touching his lips with his index finger. He was suddenly acting drunker than he possibly could yet be on what he had drunk from the bottle.
Concerned by his performance, she said, “Sit down with your drink.”
He sat on the sofa. “I got this feeling that for some reason you’re not going to get anywhere trying to collect that G.I. insurance money.”
“That’s ridiculous. He was in the service, wasn’t he?”
“Who knows what Augie might do? Maybe he just didn’t take any out.”
“I heard it was compulsory.”
“Yeah, but…” He looked at the carpet and went to another subject. “I’m feeling my age. God damn it, I’m not going to last forever. I tell you I want that boy to know who his real father is.”
“Will you keep your voice down?” she cried, though in an undertone.
He shouted, “I’ve waited long enough!”
She thrust both hands at him. “Are you crazy?”
He gestured at her with the glass. “I did it for him. At least I can say that much. I didn’t do it for the money.”
The slur infuriated her, but she still kept herself under control. “On second thought, I would like to go out to eat.”
“I want to get this settled.”
At last she sat down beside him, not in companionship but with a purpose to lower the volume of the conversation. “You’ve had all these years. Why now?”
“Augie was alive.”
She could have laughed at that statement, but given his emotional state, did not.
He took a quick drink, and said, “You don’t have any idea of what being a man is.” He seemed in some kind of burgeoning despair. She felt no sympathy for him. She could not remember what she had ever found attractive in him, after wasting twenty years. He sighed and continued. “My dad used to kick the living shit out of me for the least little thing. Augie, never to my knowledge anyway, ever got punished for anything. Maybe you could say he never did anything to get punished for.” He swallowed some Scotch and narrowed his eyes as if in speculation. “You could say that. Now you can sneer at this, but let me tell you something: I even admit Augie might be a better father than I could ever be. Maybe I hated my own father too much, you see?”
She finally asked, “Aren’t you drinking more than usual?”
He brandished his glass at her. “You can’t stand to hear this kinda thing, can you?” And added almost as an afterthought, “You fucking bitch you.”
Because of the offhand nature of the abusive term, she was not as angered as she might otherwise have been, but she would not let him get away with it.
“Don’t take it out on me if you’re having trouble being a man.” She sneered and drew away.
He stared into his empty tumbler. “Augie should have whipped your whore’s ass from the beginning.” He looked up, smirking, his eyes focusing on something, or nothing, past her shoulder. “Old Augie always suspected you were giving it to everybody in town except me.”
“Why?” she responded, smiling poisonously. “Because he thought you were queer?”
“You’re lying!” E.G. shouted. Then he strangely became very quiet and mumbled as if to himself, “You’re trying something I’m not going to let you get away with.”
“Pull yourself together,” she said with disgust. “You’re just going to feel worse with all that whiskey in you.”
“You don’t want me to say anything, do you?” He leaned over to the bottle on the coffee table and poured himself more Scotch. His hand was steady enough. “I got news for you: I’m going to say it anyway. You broke Augie’s balls all those years. I don’t know how he could take it, but he always felt a responsibility for his family. Even when he finally left, he still sent back those support payments.”
“They came from the Army, not him,” Esther pointed out. “I didn’t owe him anything at all. The truth is, he didn’t support us. But you know that. Why are you defending him, all of a sudden?”
E.G. reared back in indignation. “For Christ’s sake, isn’t there a decent bone in your body? We just picked up his ashes. I’m trying to speak well of the dead.”
She forgot herself for an instant to ask, “After what we did?”
His eyes were hollow. “That’s exactly why I want to tell the boy who I am. It might not make it right, but —”
“Then why don’t you just go and do it?” she asked. “Don’t keep whimpering to me. Why not try to prove for once you’re not the gutless wonder you seem?”
He had lately replenished his glass without drinking from it,
and he now threw the contents into her face. The alcohol made her eyes smart. It was a moment before she could shake off the effects and find the bottle. Her purpose was to brain him, kill him if possible, and she swung the bottle as violently as she was able, but she was a woman, unused to this type of effort and without sufficient strength to move the heavy weapon (he had not drunk more than a third of its contents) with a force that matched her rage. Also, in their relative positions she could not establish good leverage. Therefore the blow he received was glancing, but struck the sensitive temple.
He dropped the glass and clasped his face, moaning at first but soon going into a full-throated howl of fury.
He leaped to his feet and pulled her up. He threw a punch that could have destroyed her nose, but she was swinging the bottle again at that moment, and his fist was deflected somewhat but still caught her in the right eye.
She missed him entirely with her second swing. He was still making vocal noise, but she was utterly silent, and his next punch crushed her mouth.
With her good eye she saw Orrie in the doorway to the foyer. He carried that gun of Augie’s that she always hated. He screamed at E.G. and when the man turned, shot him with a great blast of fire and sound. E.G. buckled but remained on his feet. It was obvious that Orrie would shoot him with the other barrel as well, perhaps killing him, making incredible any argument that it was accidental or in self-defense. It was concern for the son she adored and not her quondam lover that moved her now to hurl her body between the two.
She took the second charge between her breasts.
PART III
1
The attic had not been sufficiently secluded to meet all of Ellie’s requirements for privacy, and therefore during the preceding summer she had found, in the patch of woods behind the house, a little hollow walled by bushes and with a big slab of stone to lean one’s back against. In dry weather she could sit there and think in peace. Should this refuge be found by a wandering tramp, she carried along, concealed in a ring notebook, the knife of Orrie’s which she had told him she kept as defense against a sexually importunate Uncle Erie. She had no regrets about so lying about Erie when he was alive: he had been a wicked man, an adulterer and finally a murderer, and any measure that would bring him to punishment was justified, though she had had nothing specific in mind as to the form such vengeance might take. Certainly she never envisioned his being shotgunned point-blank in the living room, and by her brother, who she could have sworn had not taken her seriously. “My God,” she had screamed when she reached the living room and saw what was there. “You did it.”
Ellie had looked once at her mother’s body and then never again: it was too awful and not at all what she had had in mind. If she allowed herself to think about such matters she could not survive, and therefore she avoided the subject by exerting what she had always considered her superhuman will, which was like bringing down a steel shutter of the kind she had seen protecting closed shops on her only trip to the city.
Orrie just stood there, holding the gun. The shots had been so loud that they seemed to continue to echo throughout the house. She expected people would come bursting through the front door at any moment, and not to help but rather to arrest her brother and perhaps herself as well.
She told him to put the gun down.
He dumbly did as ordered, going to some pains to find the rare place on the floor that was not soaking with blood.
He raised his hand and tried to speak, but Ellie quickly anticipated him. “Nothing can be done for them,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
He protested incoherently and tried to go to their mother’s body. But he had become so weak that Ellie was able virtually to strong-arm him into the hallway.
“I know it was justified,” she said. “But who else will believe that?”
Suddenly he spoke clearly. “She ran right into it.”
“It’s done now,” Ellie said. “I know why it happened, but —”
“No, you don’t!” Orrie cried with a strength he could not transfer to his body, for she was still able to keep him moving towards the kitchen. “I didn’t do it because of you! He was beating her to a pulp, the dirty son of a bitch. I’d do it all over again to him. But she ran right in the way.”
They could not leave the house, with him all but screaming now. “Will you be quiet?” she said. “I’ve got to call the ambulance.”
He tried to pull away, crying, “I’ve got to go back to her.”
“No,” Ellie said conclusively. “You’ll only make things worse.” She could not, if challenged, have explained just what she meant by the phrase, but it had its effect on Orrie. He sank to his knees and clasped his hands at the level of his chest, and asked God to forgive him. Despite her great regard for her brother, Ellie had always believed him wrong in becoming agnostic at the age of sixteen. Her own faith, which had little to do with the organized creeds, had never wavered, and had God not now decisively proved He would bring down retribution on criminals whom human beings refused to punish?
All the same, in the midst of this moral smugness, she could sense that a tremble had begun to develop down in the arches of her feet. Unarrested, it would climb upward to claim her entire body, and if that happened Orrie would have no one to protect him in his own delicate state. Whatever his protests, he had honored his promise to her to avenge her father’s murder and she was therefore responsible for him.
“We have to get out of here,” she told him. “They’re not going to believe us. The police chief wouldn’t listen to me before any of this happened. It could have been prevented. I wanted them to go on trial for their crimes, but no.” She found a flashlight in a drawer of the kitchen cabinet and pressed its switch. The batteries were weak.
“Here, hold this.” She handed the flashlight to him, with an idea that it might give him a chore on which to focus while she called the ambulance. But at that moment someone began to pound loudly on the front door and shout in a kind of voice that sounded official. So the shots had been heard, and the police were at hand.
Ellie pushed her brother out the back door and caught the screen that would have banged behind them. At the bottom of the yard she looked back and could see above the house the police car’s red light against the high foliage on the opposite side of the street. She went in front of Orrie and, seizing his hand, led him off their property and into what, after a favorite childhood book, one in fact that Orrie had given her, she privately called the Wildwood. Though it might be short on trees and overabundant in weeds, it was as close as she could come locally to an enchanted forest. The flashlight grew even weaker with use, and they wandered for a while, making too much noise in the brush, before she found her hideout, the depression in the ground behind the glacial boulder.
She pulled her brother down. They sat side by side, backs against the rock. Fortunately the night was warm. But she wished she had had time to bring along the remainder of the loaf of bread and the rest of the baloney. He would be hungry by morning. Maybe she could sneak back to the house, once they were done there.
“I killed her,” Orrie said pitifully.
She put her arms around him, partly to suppress any tendency he would have to raise his voice, but also to arrest her own trembling, which had begun again.
“She ran right in the way,” said Orrie. “Why did she do that? Why?”
Ellie knew it was to protect Erie, but this was not the place to make that point.
“He was punching her,” Orrie said. “God knows how long he had been doing it before I heard the screaming.”
Closer to the scene and ever alert to what went on when Erie and her mother were together in the house, Ellie had of course heard it too and felt vindicated: the murderers were at each other’s throats. She said, not untruthfully, “I didn’t think it was that serious.”
“You should have seen him,” said Orrie. “The way he was hitting her. I don’t know why I brought the shotgun along. It was just the way she sounded
, I guess. I really didn’t know Erie was still there. It could have been one of those Rivertown people who broke in…”
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Ellie said, hugging him fiercely. But he kept repeating the same thing, all night long. All she could do was to hold him.
2
Paul Leeds had just returned to the dorm from Spanish 101 when a fellow from a neighboring room shouted through the door that there was a phone call for him.
The telephone was at the end of the hall, near the firehose that hung coiled behind a glass window.
Paul assumed his father had called to complain about some forwarded bill, and he answered sullenly.
But it was a girl’s voice. “My name is Ellen Mencken. I’m Orrie Mencken’s sister. I saw you outside school the other day with my brother…?”
“Oh, sure,” said Paul. “Hi. Has something happened to him?”
“Not exactly,” Ellie said, “but he sort of does have a problem.”
“How much does he need?”
“It’s not exactly money. What he needs most is someplace to stay and somebody to calm him down for a while until the problem is solved.”
“You can count on me,” Paul said. He had wished Orrie would introduce them, the other day, for he liked the way she looked: nothing cheap about her. She looked smart, and her conversation now, clear and straightforward, not the devious kind of thing he believed characteristic of young girls, confirmed him in his first impression.
“I guess I better leave it to Orrie to tell you about the problem,” Ellie said.
“Sure,” he said. “I still am hanging on to the car I rented the other day. I thought it might come in handy before long. If I start now, I should get there between seven and eight.”
“That will be really nice of you.”
The compliment pleased him. “All right then, I’ll see you soon.”