Acts of Mercy (23 page)

There had been nothing for him to do then except either to barge into the house—which might have angered and upset the President enough to make him not only refuse to listen but to have Justice confined to quarters—or to go on patrol. So he had gone on patrol, concentrating his vigil on the manor house, the guest cottages, the security and staff quarters. Whenever he encountered another agent on duty, or any of The Hollows’ private security police, he stopped and suggested carefully that they be extra watchful tonight; the President’s bombshell at the press conference might bring out part of the lunatic fringe, he said, you never knew how people would react to news like that. That was as far as he could go, and it did nothing at all to ease the fear and tension inside him.

He moved now through the gardens behind the manor house. The lights in the President’s study were on, he saw, and the idea came to him to hail Augustine from outside, get in to talk to him that way. Justice crossed to the window, stood close to it and then called out, “Mr. President? It’s Christopher Justice, sir. I’d like to speak with you.”

No response.

“Mr. President?”

No response.

Justice listened. There was a faint electric whirring from within: Augustine’s toy train outfit. So the President was inside; at least he knew that much. Amusing himself with his toy trains and not responding even out of curiosity to summonses from outside.

Just stay there, sir, Justice thought. Don’t leave the house or respond to any other summonses.

Grimly, he turned away.

Inside the study Augustine sat in front of the train board and stared at a 1927 Ives locomotive dragging a string of tankers and coal gondolas around the tracks. I should have gone into railroading instead of politics, he thought. I should have become a highballing engineer on the last of the steam locomotives on the Southern Pacific or the AT&SF. The smell of cinders and burning coal and hot cylinder oil; the pound of the 2-10-4s and the 4-6-2s and 2-8-0s; the roundhouses and the freight yards, the high mountain runs and the desert crossings, the close-knit fraternity of railroaders. To hell with trying to shape the destiny of the world. To hell with the thankless futile eviscerating world of politics. Give me anonymity and freedom and dignity. Give me a little joy.

The toy locomotive was just entering the tunnel cut into a green-painted “mountain” on the left side of the board. Augustine reached out a hand, ran fingertips over the rough papier-mâché surface—and the throbbing melody of “John Henry” began to play again inside his head.

Outside the window a voice called out abruptly, “Mr. President? It’s Christopher Justice, sir. I’d like to speak with you.”

Augustine raised his head and looked over at the drawn curtains. But he did not say anything; he had no desire to talk to Justice tonight. More nonsense about a homicidal maniac, probably. He had enough things preying on his mind as it was, not the least of which was Maxwell Harper.

“Mr. President?”

No, the only person he wanted to talk to was Claire, and he had been putting it off since five o’clock. But what was the point in continuing to put it off? He would have to discuss it with her sooner or later; he might as well get it over with. She was innocent of any wrongdoing, after all; there was no doubt of that. How could there be any doubt of that?

Augustine got to his feet and went out of the study without bothering to shut off the train board. Most of the lights were on, but the house was quiet except for the faint creeks and groans of settling timbers. Almost like the White House, he thought. Almost as if there were ghosts here too—the ghosts of his father and all the years of his life, whispering to him unintelligibly in the night.

Claire was not in the master bedroom, not in the library or the parlor. He heard crackling noises in the family room, and when he entered he saw her bending before the hearth, feeding pine logs heavy with pitch into a blazing fire.

She straightened around as she heard the sound of his footsteps, the orange firelight dancing on her face. She had changed clothes since he’d last seen her: wearing a blue sheath dress now, blonde hair combed out and brushed into waves that clung to her shoulders. When he came up to her he saw that her eyes were solemn—and the illusion that he could plunge into them, become absorbed by them, came over him again. But it was neither an uneasy sensation nor a sexual one this time; it was one of longing, because in absorption there would be escape.

He said, “That’s a nice fire,” but he was only making words.

A wan smile. “Yes. Are you hungry, Nicholas? I can have Mrs. Peterson fix you something—”

“No,” Augustine said. He had skipped dinner because he had no appetite and because he hadn’t wanted to talk to her; he still had no appetite, the thought of food made him ill. “I want to ask you something, Claire.”

“All right.”

He took a breath. “I saw you with Maxwell this afternoon,” he said. “The two of you in the south garden.”

Her face paled. “You ... saw us?” in a whisper.

“Yes. I came out for a little air and I saw him touching you, I saw you run away from him. I want to know what happened out there.”

Moistness glistened in her eyes. Tears? She didn’t speak. “Tell me what happened, Claire. Why was he touching you? What did he say to you?”

“He said ... Nicholas, I don’t want to—”

“Tell me!”

“He said he had deeper feelings than any of us imagined, that he was a human being and not a machine.” Her throat worked. “He acted ... strange, different; it frightened me and I ran.”

Dully Augustine said, “There’s more to it than that.”

“No ...”

“Yes. Yes there is. He said something else, didn’t he.”

“All right. All right. He said he ... he said he was in love with me.”

Augustine flinched. Betrayal—again and again and again. Even Maxwell Harper, of all people. Even him. But there was no anger in him; he was beyond the capacity for any emotion as intense as rage. “I see,” he said. “Was that the first time he told you how he felt?”

“Yes.”

“You had no idea of it before today?”

“I can’t lie to you. I ... suspected.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There was no point in it. Nothing ever happened.”

Nothing ever happened, Augustine thought. “Is that why you’ve been reluctant to talk about him lately?”

She nodded. “Nicholas, what are you going to do?”

“Do?”

“About Maxwell. About the incident in the garden.”

“I don’t know yet,” he said.

Claire said abruptly, “Fire him.”

“What?”

“Fire him. Get him away from here right now, tonight.”

He was silent for a time; then he said, “You’re sure that’s what you want?”

“I’m not sure of anything anymore. Nicholas, I—”

She broke off again. And reached up, touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. And then almost convulsively pushed past him and hurried across the room.

Augustine stood looking after her, watching her hips move under the blue dress, the blue dress—

John Henry had a little woman,

And the dress she wore it was blue;

She went walkin’ down the track and never looked back,

Said, “John Henry I’ve been true to you,

Lawd, Lawd, John Henry I’ve been true to you.”

Moonshine.

The night is radiant with it as we make our way through the gardens. It paints the darkness with luminous yellows and golds, it softens the shadows and gives them a velvet gloss, it creates an almost religious aura of beauty and peace. It touches us, bathes us with its brilliance, and yet it does not reach us at all. Beauty and peace are strangers to us now. We knew them once, but no more—no more.

There is no moonshine in our soul; there is only warm black.

When we near the southernmost guest cottage we see that there are lights showing faintly behind drawn front-window shades. But of course we have expected to find him awake; it is only a few minutes past eight o’clock. Is he alone? We will have to take the chance that he is, and return later if he is not.

We walk through the moonshine to the door, putting our hand in our coat pocket to conceal the bulge of the heavy glass ashtray we have placed there. A moment after we knock the door opens, and he peers out at us with listless eyes: the cool Harvard intellectual is gone and in his place stands a derelict. Is it because his sins weigh heavily on his mind? No matter. Treason is treason; remorse means nothing.

“What do you want?” Harper says in a wooden voice.

Behind him we can see most of the room, and it is empty. “We ... that is, I’d like to talk to you,” we say.

“Talk about what?”

“May I come in?”

It is obvious that he does not want to be alone with us, and just as obvious that he does not care enough to refuse. He shrugs finally and says, “I suppose so, if you make it brief.”

“Oh I will. Very brief.”

He steps aside, and we enter past him and walk three careful paces into the room. We turn as he closes the door. He stands with his back to it and hides his hands inside the slash pockets of the dressing gown he wears. The dressing gown is rust-hued, the color of dried blood. We wet our lips; the ashtray is warm against our palm.

Harper says, “Well? What is it you came to say?”

We move over in front of him, close enough so that we can smell the faint sour odor of his breath. He avoids our eyes. “Just good-bye,” we say. “Good-bye, Maxwell.”

And we bring the ashtray out of our coat and club him with it across the bridge of the nose.

But it is a glancing blow, a sharp corner penetrates the skin and brings a spurt of blood, we have attacked with too much haste this time—and he screams. The others did not scream but Harper shrieks in a thin shrill voice, like a woman, and the sound of it—God, the awful sound of it!—fills us with a kind of wild desperate confusion. We hit him again as he staggers, but his hands are clapped to his forehead, blood streaming over the hands, and the ashtray strikes only his knuckles and he screams again, reels off a table and falls to his knees, screaming, still screaming. We know we have to shut off that sound before someone is alerted, before the pitch of it shatters our brain like crystal, and we rush forward and drive the ashtray against the back of his head, drive him flat to the floor, fall beside him and hit him again and then it stops, at last it stops, and he is still and silent and we know he is dead.

The confusion still has control of us; our head has begun to ache intolerably. We’re afraid, for the first time we’re terrified.

And inside us something seems to be happening—

We stand again, panting, and stare down at Harper. The back of his skull is crushed and bloody. We can’t make this one look like an accident, they’ll, know it’s murder. But there is nothing we can do now, and—

—we’re losing the fusion, that’s what is happening inside us,
we’re
losing control-Still holding the ashtray. When we look at it we see our fingers smeared with crimson, Harper’s blood on our hand. We fling the ashtray away from us, hear it bounce and clatter across the floor, then frantically scrub my fingers—

—
our
fingers, scrub our fingers clean on the tail of his dressing gown. Then I back away

We back away, we do it. But I is trying to take over and we mustn’t let me do it. Get out of here before I realizes the truth! We turn blindly and stumble to the door, pull it open. Moonshine engulfs me

Us. Engulfs me us me

Moonshine—and then darkness....

He was standing in the guest-house doorway.

He could not seem to remember walking here, he could not seem to remember opening the door; he was simply standing in the doorway, blinking away a wetness that dimmed his vision. In his mind there was upheaval, as though he were just starting to emerge from some sort of dreamlike state. Malignant pain in his head, too. Perspiration encasing his body, warm and mucilaginous like that caused by high fever.

Fuzzy thoughts: What’s happening to me? I was all right a little while ago, I didn’t feel sick—

And he saw the body.

His vision cleared and he saw the body of Maxwell Harper lying bloody and twisted on the cottage floor.

Shock. Horror. The pain in his head magnifying, manufacturing the illusion of sound in his ears, like the whine of a high-speed drill. Upheaval filling all the spaces of him; pieces of his mind seeming to fragment, cohesive thought, all rationality breaking up into a swirl of bright shards.