People of the Dark (22 page)

"My feelings exactly," I cut in, my tone dripping with meaning.

"Like bats," he said, and grimaced. "I hate bats. I know they're not gonna hurt no one. You live here long's I have you get to know what's going to hurt you and what isn't. Bat's not going to hurt anyone. A two-ounce flying mouse with a taste for insects, that's all your basic bat is. But, by God, they scare the piss
outa
me, Mr. Harris."

I smiled knowingly. "Just like these people do."

"Sure," he said.

"Me, too."

"But they're harmless."

I shook my head. "Are they, Mr. Boring? Are they really harmless?"

"Charlie. That's my first name. I don't much care for being called Mr. Boring."

"Oh. Yes. I'm sorry."

"So what can I do for you today? You finally fixing that gutter of yours? I got some good plastic gutter that'll last from now till doomsday—"

"We're getting off the subject here, Charlie."

"What was the subject?"

"These people."

"Oh. Sure. The hippies. Shoot '
em
."

"'Shoot '
em
'?"

"Sure." He smiled secretively, leaned over, whispered, "You take this," he pulled a small pistol from under the counter, held it up for me to see—"it's only a .22 caliber, but if you put it right up against a person's temple, you can drop '
em
good, and then you dig yourself a great big hole and you dump '
em
all in it. It's what I do with the bats, Mr. Harris. I know where they live, you see, and I go there and I kill maybe a hundred, two hundred of '
em
—"

"Good Christ," I whispered, and backed away from him.

He was still smiling. "You
wanta
come with me sometime? I think you'd like it. And if you ever
wanta
do that, if you ever
wanta
drill these hippies, you come here and I'll go with
ya
. Wouldn't like nothin' better than to drill these hippies. Remember Kent State, Mr. Harris? 1970?"

I pulled the door open and left. I thought, as I had thought about my brother,
Who can you know too well?

I went to the bank. There were no customers there, and only three tellers—a thin, middle-aged woman in a white blouse and pleated orange skirt, an attractive woman of twenty-five or so wearing a blue pants suit, and a fat man in his sixties who was wearing a gray pinstriped suit and looked very much as if he would rather have been somewhere else.

The young woman looked over when I came in; she smiled appealingly and said, "Good morning. May I help you?"

I grinned, shook my head. "No."

She looked disappointed.

"I wanted to talk," I went on.

"Oh?" she said, and looked confused.

I heard the door open behind me and I stepped out of the way. A scruffy, unshaven man of about forty-five, who smelled vaguely of cigarettes and cow manure, came in. He was counting a stack of bills—"Four hundred twenty," he whispered, "four hundred thirty, thirty-five . . ."

"May I help you?" the young woman said to him, and he went over to her, pushed the stack of bills at her, asked her to count it, told her he wanted to make a deposit.

I went over to the middle-aged woman, said "Hi."

"Hello," she said coolly.

"I wanted to talk," I said.

"Beautiful morning," she said.

"No," I said. "It's been raining."

"Rain's good."

"Uh-huh." I fished my wallet out of my back pocket, withdrew thirty dollars, said I wanted to make a deposit.

"Deposit slips are over there," she said, and nodded at a table behind me.

"I don't know my account number," I said.

"We can look it up. Your name is?"

I told her my name. Then I added, "Actually, I just wanted to talk."

"You don't want to make a deposit, Mr. Harris?" She looked suspiciously at me.

"Sure, I'll make a deposit."

"I'll get your account number, then. Deposit slips are over there," and again she nodded at the table behind me.

"Yes," I said. "In a moment. I wanted to talk about these people wandering about."

The older man at the next teller's cage said loudly, "Bring back the loitering laws, that's my solution. Then you can throw those bums in the slammer. That'll get rid of '
em
."

And the scruffy man making the large deposit said, "Steal my corn and they'll get their fannies
fulla
buckshot."

The young woman looked offended, but said nothing.

The middle-aged woman waiting on me said, "My son hitchhiked to Wyoming once, and he did what I guess these people do—he slept where he could, under the stars, and that's okay. Brings a person closer to God."

"I think they're religious fanatics," I said, which got several moments of stiff silence. Then the scruffy man announced, "I'm a Bible Baptist, young man, and we ain't fanatics."

"No," I said, my tone apologetic, "I was talking about these people wandering the countryside. I think they've taken my wife." I felt good saying that, as if I'd gotten over the hump of the conversation.

"Taken her where?" asked the middle-aged woman.

"They've seduced her away from me."

The fat man said, "That's an aberration; these religious groups are moving into untried areas, like sex . . ."

The young woman said, "Sex is hardly an 'untried area,' Lou."

"They're probably all fucking their brains out in the woods," Lou said.

"Ladies are present," the scruffy man admonished. Lou apologized.

The middle-aged woman said, "If she's a consenting adult, Mr. Harris, then she is at liberty to go where she pleases and with whom she pleases. Your savings account has been closed; would you like to open a new one?"

"It's been closed? I never closed it."

"No. Your wife did. Several days ago. When you were still in the hospital, I think. How's your arm, by the way?"

I ignored the question. "Who was she with?"

"She was by herself, Mr. Harris." She paused. "I think there was someone waiting outside for her. A man about your age, maybe. Would you like to reopen the account?"

"No. Thank you." I turned to leave; Lou, the fat teller, called after me, "Once deer season opens, these hippies will go away, couple of '
em
get shot. You wait and see." And he grinned knowingly.

"No one's gonna get shot," the scruffy man said.

"Someone always gets shot," the young woman said.

I turned back. "My God," I said stiffly, "none of you people sees the
importance
of this thing. My God, you don't even care, do you?"

"Mister Harris," Lou said, "there's no
problem
. And if a problem should develop, we'll deal with it."

"I don't even
live
here," the young woman said. "I live in Canandaigua, and we don't have a problem there."

"What can we do with these people, anyway?" asked the middle-aged woman. "You can't just tell them to go away. It's a free country, Mr. Harris."

"Oh, for God's sake—"

She cut in, "Your wife didn't look at all unhappy, either. I think it's important that you realize that. She was smiling, in fact."

"That makes me
very
happy," I said, my tone thick with sarcasm.

"Just trying to be . . ." the woman said, but I was out the door before she finished the sentence.

I
went looking for Erika myself. I drove down Hunt's Hollow Road, past the house, past Wildwood Farms, two miles north of the house, drove another half mile and parked the car on the shoulder of the road. The rain had stopped, but the shoulder was several inches deep in mud and I thought I'd have trouble getting the car out of it.

I made my way into a shallow gully just off the shoulder, climbed up the other side, pushed into some thick brush there, and fifty feet in came to Old Hunt's Hollow Road, which hadn't been used for over fifty years and was overgrown with grasses and birch trees that sprang up after a forest fire thirty years earlier.

I stopped at the center of this road, looked right and left; I saw very little except the occasional movement of birds. Then, surprising myself, I yelled, "Erika?" I heard anger in my voice. "Erika,
goddamnit
!" The words came back to me. Once. Then again. And again several seconds later. I remember thinking what a weird kind of echo it was, so I yelled once more, intrigued. "Erika,
goddamnit
!" and the words came back to me from several places—from Hunt's Hollow Road a hundred feet to my right, from deep within the thickets to my left, from behind me, and up. I turned and looked. Old Hunt's Hollow Road gave itself over to a thick growth of red dogwood and sumac that grew on a small hill fifty yards away. The top of this hill was just visible through the vegetation. And as I looked, I heard "
Goddamnit
, Erika!" in my voice, and I thought again,
This is a fucking weird kind of echo.

"
Goddamnit
,
goddamnit
!" I heard, still in my voice, and I whispered, "What the hell is going on here?" That came back to me, too, in the same stiff whisper, but as if there were a crowd of people hiding around me, repeating it. "What the hell is going on here?" I heard. Then, as if in afterthought, "Erika?" And a moment later, "
Goddamnit
!"

"This is fucking weird," I said.

"This is fucking weird, Erika," I heard. "
Goddamnit
,
goddamnit
, this is fucking weird!"

"What the
hell
is going on here?"

"What the
hell
,
goddamnit
, Erika,
goddamnit
, what the hell,
goddamnit
, is going on, Erika,
goddamnit
, what the hell is going on, this is fucking weird, here,
goddamnit
, what the
hell
is going on here, Erika, what the
hell
. . ." It was a chorus of shouts and whispers that I heard now, from many directions, as I turned tight little circles at the center of Old Hunt's Hollow Road, as I tried desperately, and in vain, to see something other than dogwood: sumac, maple, and birch, the movement of birds, an occasional glimpse of blue sky.

Then, like frogs startled by noise, the voices stopped all at once.

"Erika?" I said. "Are you there, Erika?" Silence. "Erika, come back home; come home with me? We've got things to do—the roof needs fixing; the gutter needs fixing; the front door sticks." Far to my right, in the direction of the house, a big raccoon ambled across Old Hunt's Hollow Road. On a lone wooden fence post close to me a white-faced hornet took flight, circled me once, then again, and was gone. The air had become still, humid, and warm in the last half hour.

I called, "Hey, Erika?" and waited a moment, heard nothing, added, "I love you," felt a little embarrassed smile start, dissipate, said again, louder, "I love you!" and knew that, out of desperation, frustration, and anger, I was on the verge of shouting it. But I didn't shout it. I turned and pushed my way back through the thickets to the car, had some trouble getting it out of the mud at the shoulder, but finally did it with some skillful use of the clutch and accelerator, and on the short drive back to the house said over and over again, "Goddamn religious fanatics, goddamn religious fanatics!"

It was not until later, upon reflection, that I realized the roads had been empty.

W
ill came to the house that evening. He stood sheepishly at the front door and said, "Can I come in?" I said of course he could and showed him into the dining room, asked if he'd like anything. "No," he answered, thought a moment, and added, "I've never felt quite so foolish, Jack."

"No need," I said.

He sat at the head of the table. I stood, arms folded, near the door to the library, my back to the wall.