Whipple's Castle (74 page)

He was prepared to make these observations, to take these scorches upon his nerves and go, when she walked straight toward him with knowledge in her eyes. She put her long hand on the window sill of his truck.

“Davy?” she said. Her voice had always been throaty, with a small warble in it, as though she barely controlled some deep emotion.

“Hi, Carol,” he said. Her eyes were a little older, which made them clearer, more distinct around the edges, the irises a more primary blue. Her unhappiness had a touch of rakishness about it—the way she tossed her head, her rich auburn hair swinging across her cheek. She seemed about to do something dramatic.

“Are you waiting for anybody?”

“I was looking around for Horace, but I don't expect to find him. You want a ride?”

“Yes!” She got in beside him and leaned back with an unhappy sigh.

“What's the matter?”

“Oh, it's Mike Spinelli. I'm through with him, absolutely
through!”
She took a Kleenex from a little cloth bag and blew her nose.

He started the truck and drove around the square to Sum-merslee Street, which led toward her house. When she saw where he was going she said, “Are you doing anything, Davy? Do you have a date or something?”

“No,” he said, trembling like a freshman.

“Don't take me home, huh? I couldn't stand going home.”

He drove on past her house and they entered the country. She accepted a beer. “God, that's what I need,” she said. She leaned lightly against him—a lightness that was unbearably tender, as though she possessed magnificent reflexes toward a man. “Take me somewhere, Davy. Just take me anywhere.” She held his beer so he could put his arm around her as he drove. It was all so smooth, so charged it might have been the beginning of any of his thousand fantasies about her. He seemed a child again, dreaming of being a man, his hand for the first time actually touching her waist, her hip. When he came to Ralph Hill Road he turned east; this would take them back to the Cascom road, which led toward the lake and the cabin.

He could hardly believe any of it. Ladyfingers were going off in his knees. At the cabin she accepted a drink of whiskey, cried a little on his shoulder, cried a little more after they had come to rest on the couch on the screened porch. Moonlight bathed them in its cool light, and the wind died down to an occasional soft gust. As she told him her story about Mike Spinelli, how Mike was probably going to marry Jane Stevens, he took off her clothes. Hardly moving, she helped him. Pressures eased where his hands were. He could not believe what she seemed to be helping him to do. When they were naked her moans of pleasure were almost sobs; for a fraction of a moment he thought them exaggerated, as though she tried to prove her helplessness under his kisses—if she were helpless, stunned by passion, what she allowed him could not be her fault. Then his response obliterated any thought at all. That he could cause this goddess to thrash and whimper! They fell yet seemed weightless.

Afterwards she was so still he thought her actually unconscious until he gave the slightest indication—hardly a thought—that he might rise. Her fingernails pressed him back into her like threatening daggers, light needles of threat, and again he began to slide down toward falling—a strange slope, convex, all forbidden oil and soft color—toward the totality, the prickly hysterical pleasure of a child. She cried that she loved him. He was certain that he loved her. Nothing like this stirring of nerve and depth had ever happened to him. He was the cause of her rapture, and when the time came again he unraveled, froze; in his shut eyes constellations burned. And then, almost at once, her moist white body turned guiltily beneath him, freshly naked.

They had slept. Time had passed, leaving its echo. When he awoke she was kissing the nipples on his chest, but not as if to rouse him. “I love you,” she said.

“I love you,” he said. He did love her, though a warning, thin as a distant siren, told him he was dangerously convinced—too dangerously convinced. But he didn't want to think, to endanger his love. He thought of marriage, of the nights, one long night turning her inside out, over and over.

“You're not like him at all,” she said.

“Mike?”

“He's so
selfish,
Davy. I never realized it. I'm such a dumb bunny anyway.” She stuck her little finger in his navel, and he sneezed. With a little giggle she did it again and he sneezed again. “I found your sneeze button,” she said.

“You found all my buttons,” he said, not wanting to make such a joke.

She laughed. “I shouldn't be so happy, I guess. I'm in no position to laugh. I was all fixed up for Mike and he stood me up again. It was just pure accident you came along, but I wouldn't of gone with anybody else because I always knew you had this thing about me.”

“You did?”

“A girl knows. Whenever you looked at me you thought of something like what just happened. You even thought of the same thing in
grammar
school, for goodness' sakes.”

“So did everybody.”

“Yes, but I always wondered about you. Mike was the only boy who had the nerve to ask me. The others were such little children I'd of felt silly going out with them. Mike's so selfish, though. He never made me feel like you did. I never knew it could happen. I just wanted him more and more often. Then he made me go to Manchester and lie to the doctor so I could get the diaphragm and all, and pretty soon we never went out hardly at all. We just met for one single solitary purpose. Sometimes he'd call me and pick me up and I'd be back home by nine. He'd just squirt and go.”

“Don't talk,” he said. Her voice should form itself around better words. Its tremulous breath was too beautiful for those words. He must begin to change her.

“Again, Davy?” she said with wonder. Ah, that was better. She should only say words in groups of one or two, because he loved her. He couldn't think of letting her go. He didn't want to go back to Chicago anyway. They could live here at the cabin, and he could get a job, or transfer to Northlee College. Yes. With her job at the Public Service Company and his GI Bill they could get along fine. He saw that future in mist, moon-colored, voluminous. She made him ache. A warm confusion of love and desire swirled around them—he could see its convolutions. All his problems, his aimless aspirations, were over.

“I never did it with anybody but Mike, Davy,” she said.

“Shh. It's all right.” He was turning to liquid, to rock, a smooth river broken in slow swirls by a still rock.

“I meant it when I said that, Davy. I'm wild for you.”

“Shh, now.” It was again utterly new, that shocking entrance.

At that moment real light flashed. Hugh branches printed themselves across the screens, leaves thrashing. Then the branches swerved and with incredible speed rushed across and out. A car had turned into the parking space. A car door slammed. He had just enough time to find his pants and pull them on before the screen door opened and the porch light came on with its harsh, tawdry brightness. Kate stood there, her hand still raised to the light chain. “Davy!” she said. He turned to Carol, who had found the old afghan at the foot of the couch. Her breasts gleamed before she got them covered.

As he had turned away from Kate he knew that something terrible was in her face, but he had to see the scene as it presented itself to her. Carol's big breasts, pink nipples standing, then her smooth glowing legs because the afghan had a perverse short fold in it. As he turned back, Kate's face was white, her eyes walleyed, her mouth a round hole. She bawled certain words he couldn't catch but knew were words. She stood as if bound to a stake, all the disintegration taking place in her mouth and eyes.

“Horace! Horace!” Kate cried.

“What? What?” He couldn't help imitating her voice because he felt her dread. She cried, still talking but not in recognizable words, shaking, choking on her breaths. He went to her, but as soon as her hands touched his skin she jumped back as though he'd frightened her. She looked over his shoulder, and he turned to see Carol slipping into her clothes.

“What about Horace?” he demanded. “What about him?”

She had gone all to pieces and couldn't begin to talk. Horrified, he forced her to sit down on the couch. Her keening was musical in its waverings, its slides into the minor. Sometimes she seemed to be trying to laugh. Hysteria, he thought, so this is hysteria. He slapped her face lightly, but couldn't hit her hard enough to communicate the intent to shock. Finally he went to the kitchen, ran cold water on a dishtowel, came back and placed it on her face and neck. She shuddered and grew quiet. Carol sat on the other side of her and they held her and petted her until she could breathe normally again.

He knew something very bad had happened—again in his dishonorable absence. He knew he would have to hear it, but he was giddy, almost ready to faint, and he had the absurd desire to get some sleep before he was subjected to the news Kate brought. He must take care of Carol, get her out of this first.

“Horace killed Gordon!
God,
Davy!”

No, he couldn't believe that because…

“They're hunting him now, Davy! There're men with guns all around the house!”

“Oh,
Kate!”
Carol said.

David found his mind curiously traveling, an easy inward journey toward alternate possibilities. But Kate was here, and she didn't lie her way out of things the way he might. No hopeful theories came to light, so he came back to Kate. “All right,” he said. “Let's go.” He had the information straight enough, but soon would come the confrontation with his feelings. Horace. He heard him bawling, red-faced, too big to be comforted. The giant child.

Calmly he put on the rest of his clothes. His shorts he kicked surreptitiously under the couch to be recovered another time. What other time? He felt a bit like a kamikaze. Plan the next action and the next. Steer correctly. Kate shouldn't drive, so he would take them both in the Chevrolet. He was weak, cold in the mind. His fluids were low. He would take Carol home first, to be recovered another time.

They sat Kate between them in the car, Carol trying to comfort her, crooning gentle nonwords to her. “Poor Horsie,” Kate said when her breath let her. David knew he needed more information. He had to have it but he didn't want it—he didn't want the information he already had. So Gordon Ward was dead; he couldn't yet begin to think of that enormous blank.

Carol's house was dark—it was one o'clock in the morning. She patted Kate once more, said good night and got out of the car. David sat there for a moment, then was drawn to Carol. It seemed unlike him in these circumstances, even ominous, because he quickly got out of the car, ran up the walk and caught her on the front steps. When he kissed her she made a small noise of surprise and gratitude.

As he got back in the car Kate said in a small voice, “I'm sorry I had to interrupt you, Davy.”

“Oh, hell, Katie,” he said.

Kate said something he couldn't quite hear.

“What?”

“You weren't looking for Horsie,” she barely managed to say.

“Katie, it was an accident! I was looking for him! I looked all over town for him!”

“You accidentally found Carol Oakes.”

As they came to a streetlight he saw her pale, weepy face and was full of anger and pity. “I looked for him!” said one of his voices.

“You're always off somewhere.”

“Yes! You're right!” he began angrily, but she put her hand on his arm. He said, “Katie, I'm sorry. You're right, as usual.”

They passed the dark houses along Bank Street, past the high school, one red brick corner in the streetlight, the rest of the building set back in shadow. A light shone from deep in the basement somewhere. At the comer of High Street was a parked car, with two men leaning against it. As David slowed to make the turn, one of the men waved him down with a flashlight. Without a word the man shone the light in their faces, while the other's flashlight probed the back seat.

“Where you going?” the first man said. David hadn't seen his face.

“Home,” David said. “Who are you, anyway?”

“There's a madman with a shotgun around here. Killed a man already. Where'd you say you lived?”

“Who'd you say you were?”

“Look, sonny, we're sheriffs deputies, if you have to know.”

David could hardly speak through his anger. Kate had to hear this; his brother was their object, these strangers. Finally, his voice high and barely in control, he told them who he was and where he was going. They became deferential when they heard who he was.

“There's a state cop up the hill. You'll see him.”

Fifty yards from the house a state-police car was parked with two other cars. The police car's interior light was on, its front door standing open. A big state policeman sat in the front seat, one uniformed leg out the door. Several men stood around armed with rifles and shotguns. David stopped and explained himself again. The police radio crackled constantly. Occasional metallic voices came on the air, said cryptic words and snapped off abruptly as though cut off before they could possibly be finished.

“David Whipple,” the state policeman said. David recognized him, though not by name. In his hard wide face and lounging bulk was the calculated absence of excitement of the man who had been there before. Though young, he had the mass solidity of middle age. Even his ears were huge, meaty in their simple folds. The other men watched his ominous deliberateness, his Olympian pauses between words, with the proper respect due such power. “David Whipple,” the state policeman said again. The name became doubtful, slightly ridiculous, as though David were trying to pass a counterfeit.

Kate was crying quietly. Suddenly David realized that the man was having trouble understanding. He explained again who he was, where he lived, while the bland, dangerous calm of the state policeman continued, unsurprised, unimpressed.