She took a deep breath. “I killed a gentleman,” she said.
3
The Sunlight Man sat rubbing his palms on his shirt. Luke lay on the couch in the livingroom, unconscious. He’d been out when he’d gone down to untie him. The Sunlight Man had stood racking his brains, leering obscenely for Millie’s benefit and Nick’s, but he’d thought: Enough. No more. It has to stop. He’d said, “Ah! Out like a light! That simplifies matters. Carry him up, boy. I’ll bring Granny Goodwitch.” And gave a laugh. But her eyes showed nothing, no anger, no hope, and he’d had to look away, thinking: Even you, Millie? Then everything in the world can be broken, can’t it. As he untied her he’d let his hands rest a moment cupped around her breasts and he’d pressed his face close, smiling at her, showing his teeth; but her eyes showed nothing, she stared straight ahead. Like one of those damned Jews, he’d thought. And then: Cheer up, they build weapons later, and use the blitz against the Arabs. He said solemnly, “He he ho ha, Millie. How sad you look! We must try and remember to get you a comb, the kind they use for horses’ tails. And some paint, by all means! What color lips would you like, old sweetie? Black, maybe? Bright black to match your heart?” When he pushed his face forward to kiss her she half-turned her head and the eyes turned with it. For an instant he believed she’d gone mad. But he calmed himself. She was all right.
She would still say nothing, sitting at the table, head bowed, eating the hamburger he’d fixed her. Even when he poured himself bourbon she merely looked at it, then down, and kept her silence. “You’re a crafty old bitch, Millie,” he said. “You watch and wait, like a Christian.” She showed no sign that she heard. Nick ate with his head close to the plate, fork upside down, scraping it in, and never looked up at them. “And our brother the murderer, he too watches and waits. Astute! He studies his teacher’s every move”—he took a bite, then continued with his mouth full—“except that his manners are bad, of course. That’s unfortunate. Draws attention.” He leaned toward Nick, pointing with his fork. “The first rule is, be inconspicuous. Like me!” Nick glanced at him, full of hate, then down.
But the fact remained, she was a sight. It might be she was past repair already. “My dear Millie, we must try to get more sleep,” he said. “When we sleep, our metabolism helps us to get rid of waste products in the skin and restores essential ingredients—minerals, vitamins, hormones. Yes indeedie! Cut down on sleep and you impair circulation and contract the capillaries, which causes hydration and sagging. The skin is robbed of saline solutions, the tissues sink, and the collagen becomes alas! increasingly visible. In other words, dark circles. Do think about it.”
She said nothing but moved her eyes to his face and gave a trace of a smile. It was he who looked down, this time. He said, “Still a spark of life, eh?”
Nick said, “We got to leave.”
“When it’s right,” he said.
“Tonight. No shit.”
“Go when you like,” he said. “You’re free. Millie, you know about these things. Explain to the young man about freedom.”
She said nothing. She put her fork down and dropped her hand into her lap. His heart sped up.
“Tell him about the gratuitous act, Millie,” he said. He bent toward her, fierce. “Tell him.”
Her voice was thick from disuse. “There’s no such thing.”
“Ah!” He turned to Nick. “Listen well, boy! There’s no such thing!” He turned back to her, eyebrows lifted, eagerly waiting.
“There’s no freedom,” she said. She met his eyes. “There’s only commitment and confusion.”
“A philosopher! A lady philosopher!” he cried with glee. But he said no more. His voice was not in control.
She shifted suddenly to French, her eyes ice cold, and he understood that she did it to give him pain. They’d talked French together long ago at Stony Hill, when he was just learning it. She was still better at it than he was. From whoring around in Paris, he thought. But that was wrong, he knew; her French was bookish, and what gave him pain was not the memory of Stony Hill but the revelation of her alter-soul’s entombment: She came alive, speaking French; all her humor irony and wrath came suddenly together like fire and powder, and the Millie who’d survived went dark and fell away, and the woman she’d once meant to be rose out of the grave of abandoned hopes, came striding forth, as confident as a smiling ghost at dusk. He tried to think how to stop her, but nothing would come.
“Tu es un meilleur professeur que tu le saches,” she said, soft and fast. “Si quelqu’un peut se vanter de la franchise, de l’acte gratuit, c’est moi. Mais le cerveau est toujours croche à l’animal, petit frère; on dit au cerveau, ‘Ne le haïs, cerveau!’—Comme on dit sur la croix, ‘Pardonnez la merde, il ne sait pas ce qu’il fait!’—mais le corps est en feu, et le coeur pompe, ‘Haïssez! Haïssez!’ Et même si tu libères l’âme, aliènes en esprit et voyages des lieues et des siècles, chéri, le corps que tu as laisse dans son lit se levera quand il aura faim; il mangera ou fera la cour ou tuera quelqu’un par plaisanterie.”
“Is that why we do it, Millie?” he said, heart thudding.
“Tu dis.”
Nick said fiercely, “They’re coming. You know it, and you just sit here and listen to jabbering.”
“Shut up,” he said. “Not tonight.”
“Il en a tué trois,” she said. “Combien tu en as tué?”
He sucked in breath. “Stop it. That’s enough.”
“Ou est-ce que tu simplement fais le fou? Pourquoi?”
“That’s enough, I said.” He caught hold of the table and meant to heave it toward her, knock her to the floor; but he stopped himself. “Keep that up and I’ll tie you in the cellar.”
She said no more, but her mouth—not her eyes—smiled.
After a long time he said, almost a whisper, “There are no laws, my boy.” He did not look at her. “Only the laws of man, which are easily beaten, and the laws you make up for yourself, which may be obeyed, once they’re made up, but only then. That is my lesson for this evening.”
“Une leçon sotte,” she said under her breath, but he heard it; no doubt he was meant to.
“Not really,” he said. “One ought to be engagé, I admit it. But the state is not always attainable—like the state of grace. In Rome do as the Romans do, yes. But if you live in the garbage dump, my dear—” He let it trail off, looking again at Nick. “The next man you kill, it’s on purpose,” he said. “But also, the next man you don’t kill that will be on purpose, too.”
“Pas vrai,” she said.
He looked at Nick. “Maybe not,” he said at last. He stood up. “I have work to do. You’ll keep an eye out?”
Nick nodded and glanced up. “Leave the gun,” he said.
The Sunlight Man shook his head. “Not this time.” He went to the garage and began his preparations. An hour later, running behind time and beginning to feel panicky (“Like any common laborer!” he thought), he went in and, evading the question of what to do with Millie, demanded Nick’s labor. “No,” Nick said. The Sunlight Man was forced to draw the gun and strike him on the cheek. Afterward, breathing hard, he said, “I’m sorry. You’ll see it’s for the best. Now get on out there.” “No,” Nick said. He raised the gun again; the boy changed his mind. Time, the Sunlight Man realized, was running out on him fast.
“Millie, you should be on my side,” he whispered, “not theirs.”
“You have no side,” she said.
“Not so, sister. My actions misrepresent me. The pressure of events. It’s happened to me before, if I tell you the truth.”
“To all of us,” she said.
He had, suddenly, a terrible urge to embrace her and sob, ask for help, but he said, “I have terrible urges to embrace someone, cry out for help.” He laughed, “My whole nature howls ‘Stop! Why can’t we start over, fresh?’ In the graveyard, for instance, when I knew for sure … almost for sure … that my sons were dead. ‘This can’t go on!’ I said. ‘We’re human bei
ngs, a common cause! We ought to present a united front against the wolves and the trolls and the Worldsnake.’ Yes! I resolved to confess my terrible guilt to Mr. Paxton. However—”
She closed her eyes.
“—I thought better of it. I decided to turn instead to a life of art.
Millie Hodge in whites and pinks,
Reads hard books and thinks and thinks,
Lives life fully, learns it stinks,
Longs for long lost stoves and sinks!
You approve my decision, of course?”
“No comment,” she said. Lights swept over the wall. He paid no attention, then suddenly snapped awake. Millie, too, came suddenly alert. He glanced at the clock on the mantel. No time for this, he thought. No time to spare for trouble. Nick waited like a cat.
4
She hardly noticed the lights passing over the wall behind his head, thrown there by headlights coming up the driveway; hardly noticed even the grinding motor of Hardesty’s panel truck. He too, the Sunlight Man, had been off his guard for once. His hands stopped moving and his eyebrows lowered. Though he seemed on the surface, even now, indifferent, infinitely calm, she could feel his concentration in the chill of her blood. There was hardly a chance that Hardesty had not seen him. When the knock came at the back door, the Sunlight Man said, “Let him in.”
What happened was very clear to her afterward, but why it happened was not clear. She would never know why he’d said simply, “Let him in,” had not even bothered to move out of sight but had waited, holding the pistol in his left hand, standing with his back to the woodshed door but his head partly turned so that he could watch when Hardesty came. Hardesty opened the door a foot and stuck his head in, beaming, neighborly, fat cheeks shiny as varnish under his squint, and he said “Hoddy,” his limp hat hanging from his hand. Then he saw the Sunlight Man and they stared at each other, and Nick Slater stood with his hands held away from him as though they were wet. Suddenly, with a jerk of effort that made his face look wild, Hardesty pulled his head back and pulled the door shut behind him and ran.
“K’out the way!” the Sunlight Man said, coming at her, and he had the gun in his right hand now. She flattened against the refrigerator and he went past her and jerked at the door, and then Nick Slater was beside him, going out after him too. “You wait here,” Taggert said.
“No,” Nick said.
“Don’t!” she yelled, “Please!”—but she wasn’t sure afterward whether she’d yelled it aloud or only in her mind.
Luke came staggering to the kitchen and over to the window, eyes screwed up tight, and he looked out into the darkness with his hands at each side of his head like blinders to cut out the windowpane reflections.
“They’re going to kill him!” she said.
It came to her that his footsteps had gone toward the chicken-house, to the south of the garage, but the Sunlight Man had gone north, toward the barn. She could hear them out there shouting, Nick and he, circling through the burdocks so that if he was in the barn he wouldn’t get away. It wasn’t more than forty feet to the chickenhouse from the garage back door, and it was dark there. Beyond the chickenhouse, the grove began; from there you could make it to the road without being seen. Before she knew she would do it, she kicked off her shoes, slipped out into the garage and through the back door, and began to run. The grass was wet and deep and her feet weren’t making a sound. When she got to the high weeds along the side wall she dropped to her knees and pressed into the wall’s darkness. She could still hear them, calling to each other. She inched around to the rear wall and whispered through the cracks, “Mr. Hardesty.” He’d be gone already, she realized then. There was nothing to stop him from running on through the woods and out to the road. But she whispered again, “Mr. Hardesty, it’s me. Millie.”
His answer came from so close it made her jump. “In here.”
She could peek through the chicken-run door, but she couldn’t get in. It was dark as a pit inside. Then her eyes began to adjust. He had his head bent down on the other side of the wall to look out. Beyond him she could see straw and cobwebs and part of a cornplanter someone had stored here, and on the wall a darker place that she knew must be nestboxes.
“You should have run for the grove,” she said. “Come around.”
“There’s no back door,” he whispered.
“You have to come out the front, the way you got in, and come around.”
“They’ll see me sure.”
“No they won’t. They’re by the barn. But hurry.”
But they weren’t by the barn. She heard Luke’s car starting up. They had figured it out and were heading toward the road to cut him off.
“They’re leaving,” she whispered. “You can cut through the back lot.”
But that was wrong too. Only one of them had left: the back door of the garage opened, and through the cracks in the chickenhouse wall opposite her she could see light. After a moment she could feel him coming toward them.
“He’s coming,” Hardesty said.
“Sh!”
She lay still, feeling the cold softness of the dirt. She dug her hands into it, and it felt good. The lines of light coming through the barn wall looked soft and alive, and where the light touched old straw and dust it made everything sharp and distinct. He took forever to cross the grass place—taking a step, listening a minute, taking another step, it must be. She remembered sleeping in the mow at her grandfather’s when she was a child. There were mice and rats there. There would be mice and rats here too, probably. She would sleep in the softness of earth and dew-wet grass and not notice them.
The hinges of the chickenhouse door creaked and Nick said quietly, “Mr. Hardesty?”
It seemed to her that she could hear Hardesty’s breathing on the other side of the wall. She tried to breathe without a sound. Then his feet and something he was holding, a pipe maybe, came into view, inside the chickenhouse, and it came to her with a jolt that he would see her. She didn’t move. Right now, she knew, he was seeing Hardesty.
Hardesty said softly, “Don’t. Please.”
She heard him move a little, only his arms perhaps. Nick stood still, directly facing him.
“Please,” Hardesty said again.
He won’t do it, she thought. There’s no reason for him to. Beside Nick’s foot there was a pail and a mess of something, old burlap. Light from one of the wall cracks made two little glows on the rim of the pail, like a pair of sights. Her neck ached from holding her head rigid in the same position and she wanted to lean on her arm, but she stayed as she was. He’ll tell him to get up and come with him, and it will be over, she thought. He’ll take him back to the house with him and that will be all.
Hardesty said, “I was startled, that’s all. It was crazy to run away like that.” He tried to laugh.
He said nothing, and again she could feel him thinking, and then she heard a crack, like the sound a bat makes. Hardesty was screaming, and then she heard the crack again, and she remembered her name was Millie Jewel and Gil was in the barn with his hands tied to the wagon wheel and her grandfather puffing her name Millie Jewel and Gil was in the barn with his hands tied to the wagon wheel and her grandfather puffing her name was Millie Jewel and his hands were tied to the wagon wheel; her grandfather puffing. Gil was her brother. His hands were tied to the wheel spinning in the dark were tied to the wheel her grandfather puffing
The Sunlight Man said, “Come back in the house, Millie.” His feet were far apart, and his trousers were wet.
5
“Ahem,” said Clumly.
Esther was working on the dress she’d been working on for years, sewing and unsewing and sewing.
“I have to go out tonight,” he said.
Her lips stopped moving and she turned her face toward him. She sighed. “Will you be late?”
“I don’t know.” He sucked at the cigar—it had gone out again—then removed it from his lips and glared at it, focusing on it the whole force of his anger. ?
??I imagine I won’t be too long. There’s no telling, I guess.”
She nodded and said nothing. He was grateful for that. The case was making him an old man, cutting the wrinkles of his jowl deeper, darkening the bags under his eyes, wasting his flesh away. She couldn’t help but see it, and no doubt it seemed to her her business to worry about it. He’d lost nine pounds in the past two weeks. And it wasn’t just the stewing or the physical exhaustion. There was something wrong with him. He ate like a hog, had the trots all the time, and he went on losing weight. Ate from sickness, not love of food. The very smell of food was revolting to him. He felt as if he had lead in his stomach, and when that confounded speech for the Dairyman’s League came into his mind, or the thought of Miller standing in a doorway watching him, or the memory of the papers piling up on his desk, or Will Hodge Sr forever turning up in unexpected places, staring at him, Clumly’s whole chest filled up, or so he imagined, with greenish gas.
Esther said, as if to herself, “When will it be over?”
“Not long now,” Clumly said heartily, and added, “one way or another.” And then, because that sounded ominous: “We pretty well got it wound up, Kozlowski and me.” The thought of Kozlowski, like everything else, stirred the green gas feeling in his chest. He’d felt free at first, a kind of joyful release, letting Kozlowski in on it. Kozlowski was a man who stood back from things, looked them over, so to speak, and came up with his own private judgments. That was exactly what Clumly had thought he needed. It wasn’t even that he wanted Kozlowski to corroborate his own suspicions. The man’s presence was enough, gave Clumly something to hang on to, as you might say. And best of all, Kozlowski was no talker. Whatever his private opinions might be about Clumly’s manhunt, he would say nothing to the others. He was safe as a bank. Or so it had all seemed then, when Clumly had made his decision to let him in. Not now. Because this afternoon when Clumly had come out of his office to go home, Kozlowski and Miller were talking by the desk, and at sight of him they stopped talking. Kozlowski had nodded his greeting to Clumly, and Miller had called with exaggerated cheerfulness, “Cutting out, boss?” “Going home, yes,” Clumly had said. “Say hello to the wife,” Miller said, and showed his grin. Clumly had nodded. They’d watched him out the door. At his car, Clumly had stood fiddling with his keys, heart racing in his chest, a belch forming, inexorable, and he’d wanted desperately to sneak back and spy and find out what they were saying. Crazily, he’d looked along the ledge below the window. He could climb up the corner of the building, where the crossed corner blocks formed a kind of natural ladder, and he could get up on the ledge and inch across. … He’d be out in plain sight, where anybody driving up Main Street couldn’t help but see him, and the next day, who knew? he might open the paper and see a picture of himself crawling on the jailhouse ledge, and some lunatic caption: CHIEF TRIES TO BREAK INTO JAIL, CLAIMS HE LOST HIS KEYS. And so he’d climbed into his car, nerves twitching, and had driven slowly home. Trust nobody, he thought. But the thought brought a ghastly smile. He was beyond that now, had no choice but to trust Kozlowski. He’d told him to come pick him up here at nine, to go with him to his appointment with the Sunlight Man. It was now five minutes to.