Flight to Darkness (17 page)

“
Leda,” he said. “Leda, Mother
died. You see who’s come home? It’s Eric.” He glanced toward me,
his voice scornful. “You remember Eric, don’t you?”

“
Frank,” she said.
“Darling.”

I walked across the gallery through the crazy
impossible dream. The dream I had tried to deny. I was tired and
sick. I didn’t look back.

“
Mother’s dead,” Frank said.
Bantram cleared his throat.

I went down the steps into the crazy but calm
sunlight that bit like white ice through the shade.

Leda Thayer was not alone. I had found her.
She hadn’t just vanished—hadn’t just run off. She was my brother’s
wife—wife to wealth.

I wanted to run. It was all I could do to walk
through the silent afternoon.

Chapter 12

I walked straight on across the lawn until I
reached the main beach road. I didn’t look back. There was every
reason why I should have remained at the house. I couldn’t. I hated
Frank’s guts for what he’d done to Mother. There was no point in
saying, “If—” because the deed was done.

I turned back off the beach road and went to
the car. It was like walking through smoke. And I couldn’t face
Frank. Not with Leda. God, I thought, Leda is here. She didn’t
vanish. She just came home. She’s right here. It was like seeing
the back of your head in a mirror.

Leda. Frank’s wife. It was unbelievable, yet
true. She hadn’t really even recognized me. It was taking a long
time to sink in. She had married Franklin Garth. She had married a
half million dollars and my brother, who wasn’t even my brother,
after all.

“
Leda, you see who’s come home?
It’s Eric.”

Yes, she remembered, all right.

But that one look at her had turned the trick.
I wanted her.

Breaking into a run, I tried to push the
afternoon’s events out of my mind. It was impossible. I wanted to
leave Cypress Landing right away. I knew I wouldn’t.

As I climbed into the car, it was like finding
the home ground they talk about; it was like grabbing hold of God’s
beard and saying, “Maybe I don’t rate, but give me a chance, just
for the hell of it, will you?”

Leda. Why? Leda, why?

There was one large room in the barn extending
clear beyond the rafters to the large skylight. The other two rooms
were more or less catchalls, though one was used as a kitchen and
the other had a bed in it.

The windows—large ones I had put in myself
years ago—had all been shuttered, but now the shutters were open,
and entering the back door into the kitchen, I smelled meat
frying.

Norma was nowhere in sight. There were chops
in the frying pan on the wood stove. There was also a pan of German
raw fries.

“
Anybody home?” I
called.

Norma came through the door leading into the
studio.

“
Hi,” she said. “You were gone a
long time.”

She was a mess. She’d changed to dungarees and
one of my t-shirts, resurrected from a box of old clothes. She was
dirt and dust from head to toe. She dangled a filthy rag in one
hand and a ragged broom in the other. Her face was smudged with
black streaks and cobwebs spun in silvered clots from her bright
blonde hair.

“
Gorgeous,” I said. “Absolutely
gorgeous.”

She smiled and wiped her face with the
dustcloth. It had a startling effect.

“
I figured the place might need
some cleaning up some.”

“
I don’t mind,” she said. “The
pussycats get me. I never saw so many in my life.” She paused
slightly excited, waved the broom toward the studio. She had
sobered up. “You should see ’em,” she said. “Pussycats all over the
place. Thousands.” She beamed happily and my insides snarled up. “I
got most of ’em, though.”

“
Wait,” I said. “What do you mean,
pussycats? We got a menagerie?” All I could think of was hundreds
of cats running around the barn. “What’d you do with
’em?”

She started to laugh, waved the cloth, choked
on the dust, then said, “You don’t understand. Come
here.”

I followed her into the studio cluttered with
modeling stands, racked tools, chisels, mallets, completed and
half-completed statues, statuettes, and other forgotten odds and
ends. Also there were crates and boxes of stuff I’d sent home for
storage here.

“
Well,” I said to Norma. “Show me.”
I felt fine, all right. Just fine. And this kid had gone ahead
believing things possible even in the face of disbelief. Leda. Wait
until Norma saw Leda. Lots of people put imaginary guns against
their heads. I’d pulled the trigger six times in the last few
minutes. Then I realized that wasn’t the way. I threw the gun out
the window.

Norma bent behind a battered, frazzled
upholstery couch, came up with a large puff of dust and cobwebs
which clung together.

“
There,” she said. “See?
Pussycats.”

I didn’t say anything.

“
There aren’t many left,” she told
me. “But it was fun while it lasted.”

“
All right,” I said. “You’d make a
good wife.”

She swallowed. “How’s your mother?”

I tried to explain what had happened without
making it sound too terrible.

Her sympathy was genuine. “I’m sorry,” she
said. “You came back at a bad time. I’m really sorry,
Eric.”

“
Yes. Everything’s happened at
once.”

“
Oh?”

I walked across the studio, unwound a rope
from a wall bracket and let down the trap that covered the
skylight. Turning, I said, “There was a woman, Norma. You were
right.”

“
Oh.”

“
She vanished for a while. I didn’t
know where she was.”

“
I see.”

“
She’s married my
brother.”

Norma dropped her pussycat, leaned the broom
against the wall, hung the dustcloth over it. “Think I’d better
watch those chops for supper,” she said. She moved quickly into the
kitchen.

I followed her. “Did you hear what I said?
This women, she’s my brother’s wife. She’s living right
there.”

“
Don’t you think I’m good, though?”
Norma said. “I went down the road to the store and bought all this
for supper. So we can eat, you know? You wouldn’t have anything to
eat here, if I hadn’t—restaurants are probably—”

“
Okay. Forget it.”

She didn’t answer. She made a great clattering
at the stove. Then she turned quickly and looked at me. “Eric. I’m
sorry. About everything. Especially about your mother.”

I went back into the studio and closed the
door.

The homecoming of Eric Garth, I thought
quietly.

It was easy enough to say Mother would have
died anyway, that the doctor was sure she couldn’t last much
longer, that her heart was barely beating. Only I found myself
blaming myself for that, too. If I hadn’t come, it might not have
happened. The old magnificent “if.”

Don’t be stupid. It would have happened
anyway.

Frank should have kept his mouth closed. But
that was his way. Anything to grandstand.

So he had the business, the money, the house,
the woman. I picked up a dried-out, half-finished image of a clay
woman clinging to an old armeture and hurled it base and all across
the room. It shattered against a post. I felt all the hate boiling
up inside me and I wished I’d really broken Frank like that piece
of clay. I could do it.

I had to see Leda. . . .

“
That Lenny Conn is
here.”

I turned, breathing hard, trying to control
myself. Norma stood in the doorway. She watched me for a moment,
frowning. “He’s been drinking. I wouldn’t let him in.”

“
You wouldn’t—good. Don’t, damn it.
No—go ahead.” I ceased. Lenny Conn pushed by Norma and strode
grinning into the room.

He had a white face that looked slick. It
should have been tanned because most of the years I knew of his
life had been spent in the sun. But slugs don’t tan, even if they
sometimes crawl from under their logs into the sunlight.

“
Eric, by God. Had to get over.
Heard you was back from the wars.” His mouth dangled open and his
wily pale eyes searched the area just above my left shoulder. He
never looked you in the eye. He whirled sharply, stuck a long pale
thumb into Norma’s ribs. “Ol’ gal, here, still beatin’ the shady’s
for you, hey?” He jerked away, saying to Norma, “Don’t get me
wrong, now.”

“
Hello, Lenny.”

Norma went back into the kitchen.

“
You been a heller, ain’t
you?”

“
Not much. I see you’ve turned a
leaf.”

He looked down at himself, stretched an arm
out and half-drunkenly inspected the sleeve of his fawn-colored
tropical worsted suit. He wore a nylon shirt which was soaking wet
with sweat—disproving their coolness—and which was buttoned,
without tie, at the throat. The wings on the collar of the shirt
were about a hand and a half long. One wrinkled outside his jacket
collar, the other crumbled in a wad beneath. The shirt was
pink.

Lenny was built like a bear and he wore
clothes like a bear might. His hair was a scraggled mass of yellow
curls and his pale-lipped smile revealed a string of even gray
teeth, which lapped slightly like shingles on the roof of an old
barn. They may or may not have had moss along their edges. He
hadn’t changed except for the clothes and a new flaunting
air.

“
I done fair,” he said.

“
How?”

He winked. When he winked he showed you the
shingle teeth and lifted one shoulder. He covered the wink quickly,
though. “Ain’t so shiftless no more. Hit’s only right a man should
make his way in this here world. I fished and gigged my way into
the upper brackets, Eric. Bought a car an’ hired me a Negro to run
the boat an’ do the work. I just sit.” His laugh was wind with
phlegm in it.

“
How’s the collection? Any new
specimens?”

He glanced with terrific furtiveness toward
the kitchen doorway, took a sidewise step toward me. “A few new
pippens!”

“
Good.”

“
One would get you right,” he said.
“The lady’s in the papers ever day. Whyn’t you come over an’ have a
peek?”

I had no intention of going to Lenny’s place
to see his collection of nude pictures and statues, even though
some of them were of extremely prominent women, actresses and the
like, who had used Pullman trains when Lenny was around.

“
Sorry, I’m busy,” I
said.

He was downhearted. But only for a moment.
Lenny’s emotions were of short duration.

“
Heered yo’ maw died.”

“
Yeah. Look, Lenny, I’m busy.” He
had heard quickly.

“
That’s all right. I reckon we all
busy.” He stood there, looking quite drunk and utterly lost. “See
Frank an’ his new one right often.”

“
Did you want anything, Lenny? I’m
really busy.”

“
Now you bring it up, I reckon I
do.” He moved across the room, padding quietly, halted before an
old statue of a woman’s torso in a fashion I’d once thought
powerful. It was the one of Venus that Norma said she’d seen Lenny
watching through the window.

“
Like this here thing,” Lenny said.
“What you asking for hit?”

I sighed. “What’ll you offer?”

He tightened his lips. It was a job. “Fi’
dollars.”

I tightened mine. “It’s yours.”

Between the two of us we got the statue into
Lenny’s car, with Lenny bubbling slightly in his throat over his
new prize. The car was a Packard, a couple of years old,
convertible, painted a bright and unblemished scarlet.

He started to get in, then said, “Oh, most
forgot.”

“
Yes?”

“
Miss Leda—she asted me to tell you
something.”

I didn’t say anything. So he knew
Leda.

“
I an’ Miss Leda’s good
friends.”

“
Fine.”

“
She says to tell you she wants to
see you. Says, ‘Lenny, tell Eric I’m miserable.’ Says, ‘Tell Eric I
got to see him right away.’” Lenny paused, rubbed his nose sharply
upward with the heel of his hand. “Leda’s right nice, now, ain’t
she?”

I thanked him and watched him drive off. Venus
sat beside him, mute and quite unconcerned over any fate which
might be in store for her.

I suddenly felt like a camel drinking water
after he’d crossed the Sahara. Word of Leda did that to me. I stood
there watching the smoking dust of Lenny’s car whirl down the
roadway and vanish on the main road.

Another car’s engine starting, whirled me
around. I was just in time to see Norma’s steady face as she drove
by. She said nothing and she drove fast. Likely she’d overheard the
conversation.

I went on inside and walked to the studio. I
looked up at the skylight. The glass was as fogged as the inside of
my head. My chest felt as though it was in a vise with somebody
slowly turning the handle so my breath came shorter and shorter
until I might not be able to breathe at all.