Praying for Sleep

  He cruises at seventy miles an hour, the tach on the dash edging red on the uphill grades, the engine a tortured whine. Owen Atcheson passes the Sav-Mor, now closed, the plate glass taped with huge X's, as if instead of a fall storm a hurricane is anticipated. Then he speeds past a housing development, and beyond that, the Ford dealership, the blue and red sign turning slowly in the sky like a lighthouse beacon.

  Then Route 236 begins to curve through the hills that border Ridgeton--the hills that are also part of the same geologic glitch that, two hours away, rises high above the stone valley of Indian Leap, where Robert Gillespie had died broken and bloody.

  Owen slows to take these turns then speeds again to fifty, hurrying through the red light at the intersection of 116. The road now rises along the crest of a long hill and he catches a glimpse of water thirty feet below him, off to the right. From the dark creek rise the spindly black legs of the old Boston, Hartford & New York railroad trestle. He slows for the road's only hairpin turn and lifts his foot off the brake to accelerate onto the long straightaway that will take him into downtown Ridgeton.

  The beige Subaru seems to drift leisurely from the cleft of bushes where it was hidden, pointed nose out. Owen sees, however, that the car's rear wheels spin furiously, shooting mud and water behind them, and the import is actually moving at a good clip. In the instant before the huge hollow bang, he thinks he might escape, so close do the vehicles approach without striking. Then the car hits the Cherokee solidly amidships with a terrible jolt that twists Owen's neck badly. Pain explodes in his face with a burst of yellow light.

  The Subaru stops short of the cliff 's edge as the truck eases over the side. It teeters for what seems an eternity, giving Owen Atcheson plenty of time to see the face of Michael Hrubek, a mere six feet away. He's grinning madly, pounding on the wheel, and shouting as he tries frantically, it seems, to make himself heard. Owen stares back but never does figure out what the message might be because just then the truck lurches forward and starts its plunge toward the creek far below.

  4/

  The Blossoms of Sin

  26

  Portia laughed shortly and asked with astonishment, "You? An affair?"

  The older sister's eyes were fixed on the sheets of gray rain that cascaded down the windows.

  "Me. Wouldn't've guessed, would you?"

  There, Lis thought. I've done it. The first time I've confessed. To anyone. There's lightning nearby but so far it hasn't struck me dead.

  "You never said anything." Portia was clearly amused. "I had no clue."

  "I was afraid, I guess. That Owen would find out. You know him. That temper of his."

  "Why would I tell Owen?"

  "I didn't think you would. It just seemed to me that the more people who knew, the more the chance word would get out." She paused. "Well, there's something else too. . . . I was ashamed. I was afraid of what you'd think."

  "Me? Why on earth?"

  "An affair isn't anything to be proud of."

  "Were you just fucking? Or were you in love?"

  Lis was offended, yet Portia's question seemed motivated merely by curiosity. "No, no, no. It wasn't just physical. We were in love. I really don't know why I didn't tell you before. I should have. There've been too many secrets between us." She glanced at her sister. "Owen had an affair too."

  The young woman nodded knowingly. Lis was horrified that Portia had somehow learned this already. But, no, it turned out that she'd simply pegged Owen as a man with a wandering eye.

  This offended Lis too. "Well, it was only one time," she said defensively.

  "Frankly, Lis, I'm surprised you waited as long as you did to find somebody."

  "How can you say that?" Lis retorted. "I'm not the sort . . ." Her voice faded.

  "Not like me ?" her sister asked wryly.

  "I mean that I wasn't looking for anyone. We were trying to work it out, Owen and me. He'd given up the woman he was seeing and we were making a conscious effort--"

  "Conscious effort."

  Lis listened for mockery and believed she heard none. She continued doggedly, "--an effort to keep our marriage together. The affair . . . just happened."

  She'd begun the liaison at an awkward time, right in the middle of the terrible sequence of last winter: Owen's affair, the slow death of her mother, her increased discontent with teaching, taking over the estate . . . The worst possible time, she thought, then reflected: As if there's a convenient moment for cataclysm.

  Lis's affair, unlike the tidy Hollywood version that she imagined Owen's to have been, had tormented her mercilessly. It would've been far easier, she told herself, if she'd been able to separate the dick from the soul. But she couldn't and so of course she fell in love--as her paramour did with her. At first, Lis admitted, she was partly drawn to her lover out of retaliation. It was petty, yes, but there it was--she wanted to get even with Owen. Besides, she found, she simply couldn't control herself. The affair was all-consuming.

  Portia asked, "It's over now?"

  "Yes, it's over."

  "Well, what's the big deal?"

  "Oh," Lis said bitterly, "but it is a big deal. I haven't told you everything."

  Lis opened her mouth to speak and for an unbearable moment she was about to confess everything. She truly believed that she was going to blurt out every scathing fact.

  And she probably would have if the car hadn't arrived just then.

  Portia turned from her sister and looked out the kitchen window toward the driveway.

  "Owen!" Lis stared out the window, both overjoyed at his arrival and bitterly disappointed that the conversation with her sister was being interrupted.

  They walked into the kitchen and peered through the sheets of rain.

  "No, I don't think it's him," her sister said slowly. They watched the headlights make their snaking way along the driveway. Lis counted the flares as the beams hit the orange reflectors along the route. Portia was right. Although she couldn't make out the vehicle clearly through the bushes and trees, it was light-colored; Owen's Cherokee truck was black as a gun barrel.

  Lis flung open the kitchen door and looked out through the dazzling rain.

  It was a police car. A young deputy climbed out. He glanced at the Acura sitting in the middle of the flood and ran into the kitchen, flicking rainwater from his face in an effeminate way. He was round with the tautness of recent fat and had the face of a man on an unexpected assignment.

  "Lis." He pulled his hat off. "I'm sorry to have to tell you this. We just found Owen's truck at the bottom of a ravine."

  "Oh, God!" Lis's hands flew to her eyes and she pressed hard, as if they stung with smoke.

  "He'd been run into--by that fellow Hrubek, looks like. The psycho. Knocked him off the road. Seemed to be an ambush."

  "No! Hrubek's going to Boyleston. You're wrong!"

  "Well, he ain't going to Boyleston in the car he was driving. Front end's mashed in."

  Lis turned instinctively toward where her purse lay on the counter. "How badly hurt is he? I have to go to him."

  "We don't know. Can't find him. Or Hrubek either."

  "Where did it happen?" Portia asked.

  "By the old railroad trestle. Near downtown."

  "Downtown where?" Lis snapped.

  His fat mouth fell silent. Perhaps he suspected her of hysteria. He said, "Well, downtown Ridgeton."

  No more than three miles from where they stood.

  The wreck wasn't too bad, the deputy explained. "We think Hrubek took off and Owen's after him."

  "Or, Owen's running, with Hrubek after him."

  "We thought of that too. The sheriff and Tom Scalon are out looking for them. All the phones in this part of town're out. Stan had me drive over to tell you. He's thinking you oughta leave. Till they find him. But your car's outta commission, looks like."

  Lis didn't respond. Portia told him that they couldn't get a tow truck.

  "Believe you'll need more'n a tow for that particular v
ehicle." He nodded toward the sunken Acura. "Anyway, I'll take you. Just get your stuff together."

  "Owen . . ." Lis looked around her, scanning the woods in vain.

  "I'm thinking," the deputy said, "we oughta get a move on."

  "I'm not going anywhere until we find my husband."

  Perhaps she sounded ferocious, for the deputy added cautiously, "I understand how you feel. . . . But I don't exactly know there's a lot you can do here but fret. And I'll--"

  "I'm not going anywhere," she said slowly. "You understand?"

  He looked at Portia, who gave no response. Finally he said, "Have it your way, Lis. That's your business. But Stanley said to make sure you're okay. I better call him and tell him you don't want to leave." He waited a moment more, as if this might intimidate her into leaving. When she turned away he walked out into the rain once more and climbed into the front seat of the cruiser to make the radio call.

  "Lis," Portia protested. "There's nothing we can do."

  "Go sit in the car with him if you want. Or have him take you to the Inn. I'm sorry, but I'm not leaving."

  Portia glanced outside, at a tree bending under a furious gust of wind. "No, I'll stay."

  "Go lock the windows. I'll check the doors."

  Before he'd left, Owen had dead-bolted the front door. Lis now fixed the security chain, thinking momentarily how tiny the brass links seemed compared with the manacles that had gripped Hrubek's hands at trial. She then locked and chained the door off the kitchen utility room. She wondered if Owen had remembered the lath-house door--the only way one could enter or leave the greenhouse from the outside. She walked toward it but paused halfway. She noticed a large rose plant--a Chrysler Imperial hybrid cultivated into a tree. Last year, one week after Owen confessed his affair, he had bought her this plant. It was the only one he'd ever purchased without her guidance. On the day of rest after owning up to Ms. Trollop, Esq., he appeared with the massive scarlet rosebush in the back of his truck. At the time Lis nearly pitched it out. Then she decided not to. The plant owed its reprieve to a passage from a class assignment in Hamlet, which her students were then studying.

  Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin . . . No reckoning made, but sent to my account, with all my imperfections on my head.

  The coincidence was too great to dismiss--this combination of literature, horticulture and real-life drama. So what could Lis do but resist the urge to destroy it? She rooted the damn thing and wondered if the plant would survive. It of course proved to be one of her hardier specimens.

  Lis stepped forward and cradled the flower. It was a paradox of her love for plants that her gardener's hands had toughened so much that she could no longer feel the delicacy of petals. She brushed the backs of her hands over the blossoms, then started once again toward the door. She'd taken only a few steps when she saw vague motion from outside.

  Walking cautiously to a window, thick with condensation and the sheets of rain, she wiped the glass with her sleeve and saw to her shock the indistinct form of a tall man standing near the house. Hands on his hips, he was trying to find the front door, it appeared. He wasn't the young deputy. Maybe, she thought, another officer had accompanied him, though this fellow didn't seem to be in uniform.

  He noticed the side door that led into the utility room and walked to it, oblivious to the downpour. He knocked politely, like a man picking up a date. Lis walked cautiously to the door, and looked out through the curtain. Although she didn't recognize him he had such a pleasant, innocent face, and looked so completely wet, that she let him in.

  "Evening, ma'am. You must be Mrs. Atcheson." He wiped his lanky hand on his pants, leaving it just as wet as before, and offered it to her. "Sorry to trouble you. My name's--"

  But he didn't have the chance to complete the introduction just then because a large bloodhound pushed his way uninvited into the greenhouse and started to shake himself enthusiastically, showering them both with a million drops of rain.

  Owen Atcheson, lying half in and half out of the chill creek, slowly came to. He sat up, praying that he wouldn't faint again.

  After the Cherokee had stopped tumbling, Owen hadn't waited for Hrubek to come leaping down the hill after him. He'd examined his left shoulder and felt the indentation where the bone ought to be. He'd made certain his pistol and ammunition were in his pocket and flung the bolt of the deer rifle far into the dark creek, exhaling at the astonishing pain caused by this slight effort.

  Then he'd straggled to his feet and run clumsily through the stream, putting distance between himself and the truck.

  Two hundred yards into the forest that surrounded downtown Ridgeton he'd stopped and rolled onto his back, lying against a flat rock softened by an old growth of moss. He'd slipped a length of oak branch into his mouth and chewed down hard, gripping his left biceps with his right hand. With excruciating concentration he had forced himself to relax and slowly, slowly manipulated the bone, eyes closed, breathing staccato bursts and sending his teeth deep into the wood. Suddenly, with a pop, the shoulder had reseated itself in the cuff. He cried out softly as the amazing pain made him vomit and then he fainted and slid into the creek.

  Now, his eyes open, he crawled to the shore and lay on his side.

  He allowed himself no more than five minutes of recuperation before standing up. He removed his belt and tightly bound his left arm to his side. The temporary sling increased the pain but would safeguard against a catastrophic jolt of agony that might make him faint again. He lifted his head and breathed deeply. The rain was falling steadily now and the wind whipped into his face. He threw his head back and inhaled the wet air. After a few moments he began to struggle through the woods, slowly making his way north, around downtown Ridgeton. He didn't want Hrubek to find him of course but neither did he wish to be spotted by anyone else--least of all a meddling sheriff or deputy. After a torturous mile he came to the intersection of North Street and Cedar Swamp Road. He found a pay phone and lifted the receiver. He was not surprised to hear only silence.

  Driving north on Cedar Swamp was the only way to reach their address. It was possible to approach the house from the opposite direction but only after driving around two hundred acres of state park and into a different township then back south once again. Hrubek had rammed him so hard the Subaru was surely useless; the psycho would now be on foot too. If the Atcheson property was his destination, he'd have to come this way.

  Despite the delay to reset his shoulder Owen doubted that Hrubek had preceded him here. Unfamiliar with the area the man would first need to find a map. Then he'd have to orient himself and find the correct streets, many of which were not clearly marked.

  Owen struggled into the intersection cautiously--a soldier on advance patrol, sighting out ambush and fire zones, high ground, backfields, perimeters. He saw a drainage ditch and a corrugated metal pipe, four feet wide. A good hidey-hole, he thought, falling easily into combat-speak. He pictured Hrubek loping cautiously down the middle of the road then Owen himself stepping out, silently, coming up behind with the pistol at his side.

  The rain was cool and fragrant with the scents of a deep autumn. Owen inhaled this liquid air deeply then slipped down into the icy water that filled the ditch, guarding his damaged arm. But he was no longer faint and was able to ignore the worst of the pain. As he moved in his military crouch, he recited to himself the profile of kill areas: chest head abdomen groin, chest head abdomen groin. . . . He repeated this gruesome mantra again and again as around him the rain grew fiercer.

  Lis Atcheson escorted the man into the kitchen and handed him a towel. She decided that in the baseball cap, with the curly hair dipping toward his shoulders, he looked very much like the backhoe operator who'd dug the trench for their new septic tank last year. He stood with one hip cocked in a stiff way that made her wonder if he had fallen and injured it. He looked mussed enough, she thought, to have taken a tumble recently.

  "I'm from over in Hammond Creek? East of here?" Trenton Heck spoke as
if no one had ever heard of Hammond Creek--a town with which she wasn't in fact familiar.

  Lis introduced Portia, who glanced at Heck in a dismissing way. With a juvenile grin Heck waited for an explanation of the exotic name. "Like the car," he laughed. The young woman offered nothing but her hand, and that unsmilingly.

  The young officer was in the squad car, trying to get an update on Hrubek's whereabouts.

  "Mr. Heck--" Lis began.

  "Trenton. Or Trent," he said good-naturedly, laughing. "Mr. Heck, ha."

  "Would you like something?"

  He declined a beer but guzzled a can of Coke in less than thirty seconds then leaned against the kitchen island, looking out the windows in an analytical, self-assured way that made Lis wonder if he was an undercover policeman. But, no, he explained, he was more of a consultant. When he told her how Hrubek had led the trackers astray then doubled back, Lis shook her head knowingly. "He's no fool at all."

  "Nup."

  "I thought he was supposed to be crazy," said Portia, who was rubbing the dog's head with an enthusiasm the hound did not share.

  "Well, he is that. But he's a clever son of a gun is what he is too."

  Lis asked how he happened to come here.

  "I met your husband over in Fredericks. We found this woman. Hrubek told her he was headed for Boyleston. So I went that way and your husband was going to keep on coming this way. The deputy tells me they think Hrubek drove him off the road."

  "We don't know where he is. We don't know where either of them are. Why'd you change your mind and come this way?"

  It was something he just felt, Heck explained. He was halfway to Boyleston when he decided that Hrubek was leading them off track again. "He'd been too, you know, methodical about moving west and trying to throw us off or stop us. He even set out traps for Emil here."

  "No!"

  "Surely did. I was thinking, he's been clever up till now and there's no reason for him to stop being clever."

  "But why didn't you just call the police?"

  He was suddenly awkward; she thought he was blushing. Eyes fixed on the window, he gave the women his account, which contained not a single period or comma, all about a reward and his being laid off and having been a state trooper for nearly but not quite ten years and a recession and a trailer that was about to be foreclosed on.