Flight to Darkness (8 page)

Nobody said anything. Hartly coughed
twice.

“
Would you be so kind as to see
Mrs. Garth home?” Morgan said over our heads to Redfern.

Redfern stood, took a last drag on his
cigarette, dropped the butt and tamped it out with the toe of his
shoe. He talked around the smoke. “It’d be a pleasure.” He nodded
to me, frowned and said, “Come along, Mrs. Garth.”

It was like swimming behind glass.

Leda turned to me, touched my arm. “Don’t
worry, Eric. It’ll be all right. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
I’ll think of something.”

“
Won’t be able to see him till
tomorrow,” Morgan said.

Hartly already held my arm. I could only stare
at Leda. She winked at me and nodded slightly.

Redfern said, “Coming, Mrs. Garth?” He frowned
at me again as if puzzled, shook his head.

Leda smiled reassuringly, touched her lips
with her tongue, swung sharply about, and went through the door,
followed by Redfern. Her quick footsteps were swallowed in the
rainy night. It was like a movie scene.

“
Okay, Garth,” Hartly said. He
shoved me gently toward the steel door. He unlocked the
door.

We went down the row of shadowy cells. He
didn’t bother with the cell-block light. It was dim, with only a
single bulb at the far end.

He unlocked the third cell from the end,
motioned me in with a contemptuous grin. “Pleasant dreams.” He
locked the cell, went away, and I heard the steel door clang shut.
Then their voices reached me from up there, a dull
mumble.

The cell smelled sour. The walls were damp.
Light from a street lamp through an outside window threw a pale
glow on an iron cot which swung chained against the wall. I
unhooked the chain, let the cot down. A ratty blanket covered steel
slats which were supposed to pass as springs. I dropped the blanket
on the floor, sat on the bare springs. To hell with that. I picked
up the blanket, spread it on the cot, sat down again.

So there were bugs. Fleas. So what? There was
nothing I could do about that.

I hadn’t walked in my sleep. In the hospital I
had walked from my room in sleep, slammed the walls with my fists,
howled and carried on till I’d landed in a strait jacket. But I
could never have blanked out, run the car to Sordell, hit a man in
the street, returned to the Seven Pines.

Somebody had moved that car.

I was plenty tired. If I did get out of here
tonight there’d be nothing I could do. The possibility of bail was
there. I nearly called Morgan, but passed it up. This was as good a
place as any to think.

Leda could turn herself on and off like a
faucet. I remembered occasions at the hospital when she’d acted
peculiarly. The way she’d acted tonight was something. It was as if
she’d pulled a shade and run off with her true personality, leaving
one behind that knew nothing about anything.

Once, at the hospital, she tripped a patient
and he fell down two flights of stairs, breaking his arm in two
places. Because he looked at her hips and waggled his eyebrows. But
she told everyone she knew nothing about it. Even though some had
seen her do it. She absolutely knew nothing, period.

Another time a nurse whom Leda disliked
spilled some coffee on Leda’s dress. It was an accident and the
nurse apologized. But Leda knew of a patient who was in love with
the nurse, but too shy to come out with it.

One night when the nurse had late duty, Leda
got some ethyl alcohol and fixed drinks for the patient until he
was tight as a drum. Then she talked up the nurse’s quality. Later
in the night the patient rang for the nurse. She came to his room,
unknowing. The man knocked her out with a caster from the bed, tore
her clothes off, blocked the door with a chair.

It was four hours before she was missed. She
came crawling down the corridor, naked, and was hospitalized for a
month.

Although Leda had the keys to the storeroom,
and others were sure of some of the facts, nothing could be
proved.

“
Yes,” she told me. “I got the fool
drunk. She’d have done the same to me if she had the chance. I
think she liked it.”

The next moment she would draw the shade.
“What? It’s terrible. Someone from the other wing must have
accidentally left the storeroom unlocked.”

“
But Leda, you just told
me—”

“
Oh, that. I was only fooling,
darling.”

But I knew she’d done it. Funny thing was it
didn’t bother me as it should have. Thinking about it when she
wasn’t around was bad, some. But when she was near me, the picture
changed. She could act queer, but it was all right. . .
.

I sat there and pitied myself for a while. I’d
heard how they could hold you in these backwater jails for God
knows how long. I’d recently read in the paper about some guy who’d
moldered in an iron flea-box for two years. Awaiting trial, while
his case had long since been closed.

I stretched out on the bunk. The old fear
about meeting Frank crept in and I thought of Leda, Mother, the
business, the inheritance, my dead father, and they all got to
swirling around viciously in my mind. There was a long, deep,
yellow-and-black funnel like when they put the ether cup over your
face and I went away spinning up the funnel into
darkness.

“
All right, Garth. Rise and
shine.”

I propped my eyes open against the dim glare
of morning, stared at cell bars. It was Morgan. From the dirty
windows above the basement wall, a hand of pale dawn palmed
stagnant air.

“
Somebody to see you,” Morgan said.
He unlocked the cell door. “Come on.”

My mouth felt like the blanket I’d slept on.
My eyes were sticky, my head ached. I was stiff in every joint. I
swung my feet to the floor. Might better have been in the drunk
tank. Company there, anyway.

Morgan was impatient. “Come on.”

He stood there, jangled his keys,
straight-faced. The long stretch of night duty had fingered
blue-black circles beneath his eyes. His red bulb of a nose had
paled to a gray mass.

“
All right,” I said. “Who’s
here?”

Morgan didn’t answer. He left the cell door
swinging open, clumped down the corridor ahead of me. He had a walk
like a tired bull. We went on into the office and I stood there. My
heart was quite still.

Leda was class this morning. She wore a
crimson nylon suit. It was like tape across her body. A glistening
black purse was slung from her arm. Her coppery hair shone richly.
“Hello, Eric.”

I couldn’t speak. What stopped me was the man
who lounged smiling at her side.

Frank. . . . My brother, Frank.

Chapter 6

“
Well, aren’t you going to say
something?” Leda said.

“
Hello, Eric,” Frank said. “How’s
the hero?” Big and false and sleek in a rich chocolate
double-breasted suit, carrying a soft gray felt hat in his right
hand. He stood there in the cigarette-smoky office beneath the dim
lights with his contemptuous brown eyes, his nose wrinkled a
little, and with that fine false smile I knew so well.

The shaking started in the pit of my stomach.
It spread like water splashed on blotting paper. Spread down into
my legs, up into my throat, my arms, my head. I stood there
trembling, shaking. I knew I must be a fine goddamned picture. The
whole long stretch of me, mud-covered, hair standing on end,
bruised face. Eric Garth.

The dream drummed in my ears. I stared at
Frank.

“
Eric,” Leda said nervously. “Say
something.”

I heard Morgan mount the platform behind the
desk, rattle papers, cough dryly.

Frank grinned. Perspiration formed beneath my
arms, trickled down my sides.

“
Take me back to my cell,” I said,
turning to Morgan.

“
Sorry.”

I started toward the steel door.

“
Eric,” Leda said.

Frank cleared his throat.

“
You aren’t going back to your
cell,” Morgan said. “What’s the matter with you, Garth?”

I looked at Frank again. Then my voice talked
apart from me. Much too loud, hoarse and hollow.

“
What brought you?”

The smile had dissolved on Frank’s face. He
looked overly concerned, worried. It was obviously false
concern.

“
I phoned him last night,” Leda
said. Her fingers drummed along the top of her purse. “He flew up.
I met him at the airport. They’ve impounded the car, Eric. Frank
has everything taken care of already. Don’t worry about a
thing.”

Something clattered on the desk. I turned
sharply. Morgan had emptied my belongings from the big brown
envelope where he had put them the night before. “These are yours,”
he said. “Pick ’em up.”

“
Everything’s fine, Eric, boy,”
Frank said.

It was like a knife.

“
Leda and I had an early breakfast
together,” Frank said. “She told me all about
everything.”

I glanced at Leda. Her breasts heaved beneath
the taut nylon, her eyes were veiled.

“
Leda told me about this mess,”
Frank said. “I’ve made arrangements. Everything’s taken care
of.”

“
You said that.”

“
Don’t worry, boy,” Frank said. He
was overgrand, more aggressive than I remembered. He was smoother
and the cruelty that had always been in him showed on the surface
now. The contempt was in his voice as well as his eyes. He was
trying hard to be nice. Somehow I knew Leda liked the way he acted.
“Saw Norma yesterday,” Frank said. “She asked about
you.”

The shaking went out of me. I went cold and it
scared me for a minute. I decided I’d better get out of here, and
quickly. I started for the door.

“
Better get your things,” Leda
said.

“
You get ’em for me,” I told her. I
went on to the door. “You said you had it fixed, that I can
go?”

“
That’s right,” Frank
said.

A door across the room slammed and Redfern
came toward me. He looked as if he’d slept in his clothes, paid no
attention to anyone, came directly up to me, guided me through the
door into the morning.

“
C’mon out to the car,” he
said.

“
What’s up, where are we
going?”

“
Never mind.”

“
He get my bail, or
what?”

“
Something like that.”

We went up a cement alley and across the
courthouse lawn to a squad car parked by the curb. We stood there a
moment, looking at each other. Redfern’s eyes were fuzzy with
sleeplessness, but the wary intelligence was there and the energy,
too. I asked him for a cigarette and we both lit up.

A stocky, fresh-shaved, bright-eyed cop
clipped down the courthouse steps, came across the lawn, nodded to
Redfern, climbed behind the wheel of the squad car.

Then Leda and Frank came along. She laughed at
something Frank said. As they neared, Frank fished in his pocket,
brought out an expensive, foil-wrapped cigar, cut the end with a
knife, and carefully lit the end.

Leda touched my hand. Frank crowded into the
front seat, full of elegant movement.

As we drove off around the square I saw the
loungers in overalls, chewing, talking, spitting on the lawn, or
slumped in the sunny heat of the steps. We went on around the
square past diagonally parked cars before colorful modernistic
store fronts. Pretty soon we were on a blacktop road running beside
a river.

“
Where we going?” I
said.

Frank turned flatly in the seat and his breath
came hard as he looked at me. Redfern peered out the side
window.

“
Look, Eric,” Frank said. “Reckon I
had to do something. You’re going to have to stay in Sordell till
this hit-and-run business is taken care of. Made arrangements for
you to live at a sort of, well, rest home for a spell. It’s better
than the jail.”

I turned sharply to Leda. She covered a
half-wild look with a sudden smile. But it wasn’t quick enough. I
didn’t like any of it at all and the old crowded feeling that had
been with me so long swept down again. The thing was I felt so
helpless. “Rest home?” My voice was quiet. “What do you mean?” I
tried to hang on but I was falling apart inside. I wanted to reach
out and grab Frank’s face, tear it off. I forced my gaze to the
rear of the front seat.

“
The best thing,” Frank
said.

Redfern felt me tense, tapped my arm,
whispered, “Take it easy, pal.”

Leda’s thigh was against me and I could smell
her perfume. Her attitude was all wrong, somehow. I tried to
convince myself I read it that way. Forcing myself to believe I
suspected things that weren’t here.

“
After all, Eric—you’ve been sick,
admit it,” Frank said. “It’s the best thing, I reckon. Only way it
could be fixed.”

We were suddenly riding faster and I watched
the driver’s red neck where it bulged over his collar. He had
dandruff. And the sunny serenity of the morning was a mock. My mind
was clotted with too much imagined wrong. I had to believe that. I
felt secluded, wanted to talk with Prescott. I didn’t want to see
these people. They, even Leda, were foreign to me. Her leg and
shoulder touching me, the soft perfume I knew—everything was
becoming foreign. The sound of the car’s tires whirring on the
road. The still morning with the river. . . .