The Captive (16 page)

"Mother said she didn't see how you could have been in any hospital she knew about, in Cassius or Grand Rapids either," Renee said, probing at him as she would do when she was irritated and baffled by his defenses going up,  separating them like a wall, and she using the old mystery to get at him because he wouldn't take her fears seriously. "She said she couldn't imagine where you were."

"You've seen the scars, and you saw what was left of the car. I told you I was in that private hospital outside of Battle Creek, and if Aunt - if your mother didn't want to check with them, it's not my fault." He felt confused again, the slip of his mind almost making him call her Aunt Cat again. God! What a life this was, a half-life. He sat still, trying to bring his temper down, turning the milk bottle slowly in a circle on the counter, feeling tired, as if he had not slept for months. And then suddenly, without thought, he was angry.

"So what the hell is the third degree for?"

"Oh, Barry."

But he was hurt and angry now, seeking excuses for his rage that would come out now whatever he did. "What's the matter if I get up at night to think? For Christ's sake, I'm a writer. I have to think sometime. God knows there isn't much time to think during the day with all the noise in the house and no place to work but the back bedroom, and it's the hottest room in the house."

He heard himself going on with the tirade as if he were standing at a distance, and he wondered with a still part of himself just what in hell he thought he was doing. It was the memory of her ex-husband he had become enraged with in the first place. She had never even known the details of that "accident" from which he had so mysteriously recovered. He had never dared tell her any of it, letting Bill make the move if he would, and he hadn't, only looked at Barry hard each time he saw him as if he were seeing him for the first time and had to memorize his face all over again. Bill had never told, either. It had been a drinking bout, they said almost as if they had planned it, and Bill had gotten out to take a leak while Barry fell asleep in the car. They had not known they were on the tracks until the train smashed into the car. Barry claimed he had been picked up by a motorist the next morning after he had crawled off into the weeds, terribly injured. He had been taken to a private hospital, he said later. Bill, aware he could be charged with attempted murder, said he thought the other man was dead, but that he searched half the night and couldn't find the body. When he had said that, he looked at Barry with a deep speculation, but he stuck to his story. And that time in the lawyer's office when the divorce was being arranged, he repeated the whole thing, almost word perfect. He was certainly innocent-looking,  Barry remembered, big and shambling and square faced, the dishevelled palace guard, he had thought when he saw Bill at the door that first night. But now he had blown his temper at Renee, and she had walked out of the kitchen back into the bedroom.

He was instantly sorry, of course. He was always  instantly sorry. And she would hold her anger until she had the advantage and then let him have it in a broadside. He smiled at the image, appropriately enough from a broad. That was the Damon Runyon lingo, the New York East Side routine. God, if he had only had the money to attend that big writers' conference the fifth of this month, what contacts he might have made. And he fell into worrying again, letting Renee walk out of his mind as if she had simply gone happily back to Sleep. It was a sure thing he would not be getting expense money from
Esquire
; he didn't have a name, and they probably didn't do things like that. He felt a headache beginning and looked up to see the windows turning from dark nothingness to the pale cream color the Indians call the "coyote's tail," the false dawn. Outside, a meadowlark was tuning up already and some mocking birds were quarreling about who had the better wind instruments. And it was not until then that he realized Renee had gone.

The door to Mina's room was open as he walked past and paused, half-expecting her to be awake, but then children fell into sleep like fish into a lake, not running and sweating after it. She slept like her mother, one arm over her forehead,  black hair fanned out over the pillow. He stood by her bed watching the slow even puff of her lips and saw the corner of an eye move. For just an instant he thought she was shamming, but then he realized she was dreaming, the eyes moving in the same way a dog's legs would gallop after the dream rabbit. He recalled something about a rabbit, leaping with arms outspread, and then.... That was something  else. He moved through the hall, noticing Renee's door was closed. He walked on down to the back bedroom amd sat at the desk where the Underwood waited, tall, black and aloof in its stillness.

The house never creaked like houses did in the Midwest, he thought, watching the blueness at the windows grow deeper and then lighten to faint rose as the dawn began spilling through Tijeras Canyon and down into the Rio Grande Valley. He would have to make another loan. Barry drew his knees up on the big captain's chair he used at his desk, hugging them as a child would. Well, he had done it once already, and now he would have to do it again to make it to the end of the month.
Every cent
, he thought,
every dog-damned cent will be paid back.
He listed them again in his mind: the
Esquire
proposal, the money from those reviews  for
Library Monthly
and
Saturday Review
, the regular
Journal
check, the stories sent off to magazines that he had not heard from:
Thrilling Wonder
,
Amazing
, and - he smiled - that stupid thing to
Ranch Romances
. If someone printed that, he would ask them for a pseudonym. Well, the stuff was moving.

But the loan was still necessary. They were broke again. He twisted his head, shutting his eyes. Just a little time and he could make it on his own, get loose from this half life, make a deal with the Beast, let him have the nights if he would just stay out of real life. For an instant he remembered the amulet, the lost security. But it didn't mean anything, like a dream, sometimes nothing at all, and it didn't hurt him. He started to ask the agonizing question
Why am I only half a human
, but he had asked that too many times. He turned to the typewriter.

***

"I wanna ride in the rumble seat." Mina began climbing up onto the little iron step on the Ford's back fender to get into the seat. Barry automatically picked her up and plumped her down on the brown cushions.

"You keep your head down now, sweetie," he said.

"It's dangerous for her to ride alone back there," Renee said. But she got in, slamming the door of the Model-A hard to make it catch.

They rattled down the dirt street to Duranes Road which was going to be paved one of these days, Montoya had promised, and on to Rio Grande Boulevarde which was paved after a fashion, and turned south. The day was brilliant  blue with no clouds yet in the forenoon, the sun stinging hot where it hit the skin, but in the shade it was still a cool New Mexico morning in June. Renee sat half turned in the seat, her eye on Mina every minute. Barry glanced at his wife covertly, seeing as if for the first time the delicate  whiteness of her skin which she kept from the sun with her wide brimmed hats because she burned so easily, the delicate line of jaw and cheek bone that gave her a Eurasian look, the black hair against the white skin. She might even have Indian  blood, he thought, some northern Indian, Iroquois, Algonquin, if not for the pale Nordic whiteness of her  complexion.

They ran on through Old Town down Central into the newer downtown area, past the stepped back pueblo  architecture of the El Fidel Hotel, the Coney Island place, the Kiva Theater, the new Bank Building.

"You could pick up the silver dollars in front of Maisel's if you need some money," Mina said as they walked along the shady side of the street toward the bank.

"I'll bet you couldn't get them up if you tried," Barry said, grinning at Renee.

"I bet I know somebody who could," Mina said, and she looked sideways up at Barry.

Before he thought, he had said, "Who would be that strong?"

"Oh, you know," Mina said, and she glanced up at her mother, who was only faintly interested in the conversation.

"Those dollars wouldn't be enough to buy new tires for the car and pay the rent this month, I'm afraid," Barry said, looking away to end the conversation. He recalled some of the events of the pre-dawn activity with Mina, but it was dream-like, and of the night ride he could recall nothing but a feeling of exultation that almost made him angry.

"You going to go on down to Sears?" he said to Renee, his tone softened, conciliatory.

"Barry, how can you get a loan with things as bad as they are? Mrs. Gonzalez said just last week that they couldn't get a loan to put in a second alfalfa crop, and they've got twenty acres or more in the Valley."

She was genuinely concerned, but not as yet suspicious, Barry thought, looking across at her. More lies, but they had to be told. No other way for a person only a year in the world but to steal a place in society, steal another man's wife and child, steal money for a house and car, for rent and now for food so he could get established in a profession he had made up in an instant.

"I know these people, sweetheart," he said, being carefully  relaxed. "They know I'm good for it, that I've had some trouble, but that I'm coming back strong." He smiled as they stopped at the corner. "You know, with those honest  blue eyes of yours, I bet they'd loan you a couple of grand."

She accepted the compliment as an apology and a request to not pry into his business of the moment. But as she turned away, her smile changed into a shadow, and just a hint of suspicion, something Barry had never seen on her face, passed across her expression like a twinge of pain. She took Mina's hand and crossed the street, leaving him standing under the big clock in front of the bank. Now he would have to do it again.

Barry waited until they were out of sight, and walked quickly around the Third Street side of the bank until he came to the alley. Standing a few yards down the alley he looked up at the heavy transmission lines on the old splintered  poles as if asking for power from God and began building  his anger. He thought of the oppression of his position as a half-human, of being cheated out of most of the house money that Renee had thought she had coming from the divorce, of Bill - yes, that's it. Bill Hegel, you rotten  bastard, killer, drunk, cheat. How I hate you. He felt the blood making his face hot and allowed his anger to mount, swinging  his arms, making his fists tight until he felt the muscles tighten in his stomach. He must have money! He would have it as his own. It was his to have and he must have it. Barry Golden held his mouth tightly as if holding in the breath that fueled his rage, felt the power hard inside him like a knotted steel cable that would not slip. He walked stiffly into the side entrance of the bank and directly to the desk of the assistant cashier. He could not sit down, the tightness in him made his body ready for battle, prepared to lash out at the enemy, to press with all power against the enemy.

The cashier, a stocky little man with a pointed face, stood up with a little vee-shaped smile as he saw Barry was not going to sit down. "What can we do for you, sir?" and his smile flattened out as he saw his customer's furious face.

Barry held his lips in a tight line, saying firmly, "You will cash my personal check for two hundred dollars, paid to me in small denomination bills."

He pushed his hand onto the cashier's desk as if there were actually a check in it. There was nothing. The cashier looked down, his pointed face bewildered, and then, he nodded  as his face went slack, "Yes sir, of course."

Barry held the rage tightly, putting out a narrow beam of what seemed to him almost a visible force directly at the cashier, who picked up the nothing from the desk where Barry had placed it, turned the nothing over in his hands, nodded again and rang a little bell for a teller.

"Mr. - ah, I couldn't read your signature clearly," the cashier said, smiling in a stupefied, open-mouthed way.

"Golden, Barry Golden, 1420 Los Luceros."

"Yes, of course." He turned to the teller who was waiting.  "Give Mr. Golden two hundred dollars in small bills, please. I will write up the cash receipt." The teller nodded and walked back behind the grills to emerge seconds later with a sheaf of fives, tens, and twenties.

"There you are, Mr. Golden," the cashier said. "First National thanks you for your business, and you hurry back, now."

"Sure thing," Barry said, pocketing the bills and walking toward the front door, feeling the energy ebb from him now like sand leaking out of every seam in his body. The strain is too much, he thought, leaning against the marble wall beside the door of the bank. The rage left him utterly now, leaving his face clammy and white. He felt he might vomit from the strain of the enforced power he had called up. If he was in the midst of an emotional scene, something that drove him naturally into anger, then he could do it, but not this way. He staggered, bumping against a fat Indian with both arms coverede with silver bracelets and holding a bag full of beads.

"You buy silver?"

"Jesus, no. Get away." Barry put one hand against the building and made his way around to the alley again where he sat on a trash can behind the bank until his breath came back. "Can't do that again," he said aloud. And what if the cashier remembered? What if the power wasn't strong enough? I can't lie at a time like that, he thought, too hard to hold everything in place. It's like - and he stopped, for he knew what it was like. Or rather the Beast knew what it was like, and he could feel it waiting inside him now, waiting,  having been summoned by the rage, waiting to see what Barry would do, if he could handle the world or if the Beast would have to come forth to save itself. And it was that, Barry realized with sick loathing, it was that he feared. There was the fate less than death, the extinction he knew waited for him if the threat to survival became too strong. And he took a great, shuddering breath, inhaling the reek of garbage from the restaurant behind the bank, the tar stench from some downtown roof that was being repaired, the smell of the old Indian who had grabbed his arm, his own fear sweat, strong and damning in his nostrils.