Flight to Darkness (11 page)

“
Everything all right?” He couldn’t
see Leda and his eyes weren’t smiling. They were a little
harried.

“
Fine,” Leda said.

He tried to see her, but couldn’t. She was a
picture, with the white sweater rolled up half over her
breasts.

“
Would you send that nurse I was
talking to in the office down here?” Leda said to Jim. “Right
away?”

Jim frowned. “Okay. That’s Janie, Mrs.
Garth.”

I wondered if Janie’d found her button. I
hadn’t inquired. Jim went away and I looked at Leda standing there,
lurking sultry and warm with her still smoky eyes and her belly
moving softly as she breathed.

“
I—I couldn’t get her any sooner,”
she said.

“
For God’s sake, put something on,”
I told her. She managed to wriggle into what was left of the
shorts. They made her look like something highly delectable out of
Dogpatch. With one hand she held the tears together. Moving slowly,
she came over and sat on the cot beside me.

“
Where’s Frank?”

“
He’s gone home,” she told me. “He
couldn’t stay on.”

“
But I stay on just
fine.”

“
There’s a mix-up, Eric. You
shouldn’t have fought with the nurse, like that. What with your
background and everything.”

She was thinking of something else. It was
pretty obvious. “I suppose you know I’ve been drinking,” she said.
“I had to. I couldn’t bear thinking of you in here.”

I didn’t say anything. It was all cockeyed.
Her coming here today as she had. It was as if she’d come to repair
her watch, or something. And now that everything was in running
order, she wanted to go. It was in the way she acted and
talked.

Then I asked her the question I hadn’t wanted
to ask.

“
What are they going to do with me
here?”

And she said, “I don’t know.” She said it to
the floor, staring at her feet.

“
What about the
hit-and-run?”

“
Nothing new.”

I could feel the blood pounding again. She
wouldn’t tell me anything. Maybe she didn’t know anything, but she
could try to relieve me. I grabbed her wrist. “Damn it!” I said.
“What’s going on?” I kept my voice down, speaking soft and hard,
right at her. “They can’t hold me here, you know that. I’ll break
out.”

She watched me, moistened her lips, looked
vague.

I threw her hand into her lap. It bounced
limply. “I asked you to tell Redfern to stop in and see
me.”

“
He’s very busy,” she
said.

I wanted to hit her. Maybe there was something
wrong with me. Barton would come and sit and watch me. Jim never
said anything. The other nurses brought me pills I refused to take.
And they hadn’t stuck me with another needle.

We sat there for another hour, talking about
nothing, while I verged on actual madness. Because no matter what I
said, Leda persisted in her vague, half-nervous manner.

Janie came down and Leda borrowed a needle and
thread from her to sew up the rips in the shorts. So she sat sewing
while I tried to get her to talk.

“
I’m leaving with you,” I said
finally.

“
You can’t, Eric!” For the first
time she showed interest. “You can’t do that.”

“
Why?”

“
Because they’d come after you.
They’d get you. This’ll only be for a little while, darling. Then
everything’ll be all right again.” She had finished sewing up the
shorts. She put them on again. They fit so tight she had to mince
steps when she walked. It was something. “They—Redfern, there, must
have a lead on the accident, or something. I’m sure it won’t be
long, now.”

“
He tell you that?”

She stared at me. “No, not
exactly.”

I cursed, sprawled back on the cot, and turned
to the wall. Pretty soon her lips touched the side of my
face.

“
I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’ll
see you tonight.”

“
All right.” I didn’t give a
damn.

“
See you tonight, then.” I listened
as she went to the door. Jim came along presently and let her out
and locked the door again. They were talking, and I heard her laugh
as they walked off across the grounds. Then the woman with the
hoarse voice began singing a spiritual.

Leda never came back that night. . .
.

A slow monotony of days and nights passed with
the sun for a few hours and the blackness for the rest and then the
sun again. And the dear old procession of eventless events. Only
now it was different.

It worked on me. It worked like a ferment
inside with each hour, building and building until something was
going to give. Because nobody told me anything.

“
There’ll be time when you
cooperate,” Doc Barton said from behind his steel-rimmed glasses
with his short-sleeved shirts and neatly creased trousers. “We
don’t like to keep you locked up like this.”

“
Damn you!”

He spread his hands. “You see?” Already he was
on his feet, edging toward the door. Not exactly showing me how he
felt, but trying not to show me.

“
How can you keep me
here?”

A smile of sympathy. I wasn’t supposed to be
able to detect smiles of sympathy.

“
Where’s my wife?”

“
We haven’t been able to locate
Mrs. Garth,” Barton said. “Now that’s something else, Eric,” he
went on. He was standing by the door, and it had been two weeks
with me ready for fighting now. “I’ve been playing along with you,
waiting for you to tell me. But now I have to press you a bit. Why
do you persist in calling this woman your wife? It’s one of the
things that—”

“
Get the hell out of
here!”

“
We know damned well she’s not your
wife! She was with your brother all the time around town, Eric.
Seems to me they were rather close. Wouldn’t surprise me if—Listen,
you’ve got to snap out of it.”

I came at him. Jim was on the other side of
the door and the door swung open. Barton stood his
ground.

“
C’mon, Doc!” Jim said. “Can’t you
see?”

“
No,” Barton said. “Tell me that,
Eric. Why do you insist she’s your wife? If you’d get that much
straight we’d have taken a step forward.”

“
Damn you! Get out of
here!”

Barton sighed and went out through the door.
Jim looked at me. He’d got his hair cut. Now it was much too short.
Almost shaved. He looked like a very thick-headed hick. “That’s
right, what Doc told you about her,” he said.

“
You, too,” I snapped.
“Get!”

“
Sure, Eric,” Jim said. “I’ll get.
But I’ll be back. My bed’s right out here now. I live in the next
room. I’m your neighbor now, Eric. Just take it easy.”

I moved for him. He closed the door and shot
the bolt.

My breath was hot in my throat. I paced the
room like a caged cat. I tried to calm down and couldn’t. Because I
would not believe what was already in my head. Leda had gone off
with Frank. She’d been with Frank. It was torture. I forced myself
to think differently. She had vanished; she’d gone away to do
something. But always the words returned—with Frank. Barton was
merely trying to shock me, startle me—for some reason of his
own.

This was how the trapped felt when they knew
they were trapped and when they had sense enough to wonder
why.

Not the truly sick. They didn’t always know,
or they didn’t care. I cared, plenty, and wondered why. I sat there
trying to calm down, trying to think it all out and—Bang! I’d be
out on the floor, standing, ready to smash anybody who entered the
room.

A couple of days later I realized I was being
watched.

Jim slept just outside my door now. I could
see his bed. My bureau with a small mirror above it, cemented to
the wall, was faced on the opposite wall where Jim was with another
bureau and mirror.

I found out about those mirrors and it made me
sick.

One day I was staring at myself in the mirror,
seeing what this was doing to me. I looked wild and I felt wild. My
thoughts were of Leda with Frank, because Frank had money and I was
locked up. I was through. Frank had it and Leda wanted it. Even
while thinking like that I tried to close my mind, certain I saw
things cockeyed. I condemned myself for thinking of Leda that
way.

I heard Jim cough. So far as I knew, he wasn’t
in the building.

It struck me all at once. I forgot Leda,
Frank, everything. I moved with the cough, fast for the door, and
looked through the slot. I’d caught him and I wanted to tear the
door down.

“
Eric!” Jim said. He was closing a
small cabinet, or maybe a panel that made up the mirror on his
side. I could just see him by pressing my face against the cold
bars on the door.

I went screwy. The top of the bureau came off
like you’d lift the lid on a kettle, screws, nuts, bolts, and all.
I smashed it at the mirror on my side. It shattered and I was
looking into the excited, worried face of Jim.

A mirror, hell. A window where they could
watch whoever was in this room.

“
Eric!”

“
Hell.” I dropped the top of the
bureau, went over and flopped on my cot.

Leda wasn’t real anymore. Nothing was real.
They were actually driving me insane. Outside, Jim was calling for
help.

Pretty soon Dr. Barton came along. He didn’t
enter the room, but stood outside the door, talking to me while a
carpenter patched up the hole where the mirror had been.

Barton talked on and on, but I didn’t talk at
all.

“
You’ve got to learn to cooperate,
Eric.”

I remembered Leda. Her glinting eyes, and her
long flawlessly curved white body tense with breasts gleaming in
soft light. Her back, the full firm contours of her hips, and the
ache inside me didn’t change. I’d always love her—wild bodied and
cryptic, quick to cleave and hot willed. I hadn’t wanted to love
her. But I did and nothing would ever change that. Everything would
work out right.

And I would remember she had vanished. She was
gone.

The way she’d look at me, then squeeze her
thick hair with it bunching between her fingers, alive and coppery,
a sable downpour about her face.

It was like I was bunged up inside, not alone
with all the crazy trouble. Leda was right here, yet she was gone.
I couldn’t catch hold of it; the thing wouldn’t form like it
should. I could smell her and feel her and she was here with me,
inside my head. So what do you do? You say to hell with it. Only
the words don’t have any meaning.

I hung on for two months like that. They kept
me in that room and they told me nothing. Even Doc Barton was
acting puzzled and he didn’t come so often.

“
You’ve had no mail,
Eric?”

“
None. Never mind.”

He would frown but he wouldn’t tell me
anything. I think he really tried to locate Leda. But he didn’t
have any luck. I tried hard not to think of her. I didn’t have much
luck, either. Because she was inside me and it was bad. And every
time I thought of her close to me, Norma got in there somehow,
blonde and smiling. . . .

“
Well, you’re going outside today,”
Jim said.

“
Oh.”

“
Going to rake the
lawn.”

“
Great.”

“
Sure.”

“
I love raking lawns.”

“
Wish you wouldn’t hold things
against me, Eric. Things go right, maybe you’ll get back to the
main building again. You ain’t caused much trouble
lately.”

“
Good.”

We went on outside. I had a pair of overalls
now, and this was the first I’d been outside since the day they’d
locked me up. The sun was blinding and, staring at my hands, I
realized I was white as a sheet.

“
A half hour, you got,” Jim said.
He walked alongside of me. “Make the most of it.”

I thought it over. “Could I make a phone
call?”

He thought that over. “I don’t know. C’mon up
to the office.” They were trusting me all over the place now. It
was a wrong move on their part. But even I didn’t know that
yet.

“
He wants to use the phone,” Jim
told Miss Watkins.

Miss Watkins thought about it for a while. She
was seated at the desk and she had very big breasts. They flowed
around inside her uniform like very soft dough or mashed potatoes.
Her eyes were small and her mouth matched her eyes with a single,
small red pout.

“
Whom do you wish to
call?”

“
You’ll be right here,” I said. The
phone was at her dimpled elbow.

“
Is it a long-distance
call?”

“
No. Local.”

“
I guess it’ll be all right.” She
eyed Jim, and he nodded assurance that he’d stand by with folded
arms. Janie went by through the sitting room, rolling her hips,
with a hypodermic needle in one hand. Jim winked at her and she
bridled slightly. Miss Watkins saw it and fussed with a pencil.
Janie vanished, rolling her hips fine.