Flight to Darkness (10 page)

“
I’m not going back to my room. I’m
through with my room.”

We stood very quietly, looking into each
other’s eyes.

“
That so?” he said. He smiled with
his mouth this time. It was a hell of a fine smile, like a laughing
dog. It was a grand smile. “Let’s cut this out, Mr. Garth. Let’s
just go back to your room.”

“
I told you.”

He sighed. His shoulders slumped. He drew them
back up with a strong gesture.

“
They won’t like this.”

“
To hell with them.”

“
Your attitude’s all wrong, Mr.
Garth.”

“
Hell with that, too.” I looked at
the river. “Hell with you for that matter.” I whipped away from
him, started down the walk.

He came after me like a bull. Breathing like
one, too. But as soon as he reached me he was quiet again. He was
perfect. I’d had this kind of handling plenty. It got me. I was a
little mad now. I’d asked Leda to send for Redfern. Three hours had
passed since she’d gone.

“
Look, Mr. Garth,” the man called
Jim said rapidly. “I’m asking you once more. Go back to your
room.”

“
No.” I felt bull-headed. It was a
good feeling because I hadn’t been feeling any way at all for some
time. “So your name’s Jim?” I said. “That’s a fine
name.”

He took my arm, tried to force it around
behind my back. I went along with it and came up with my face close
to his. “A good strong American name,” I said. “Jim.” I brought my
left hand up and shoved it into his throat. Then I squeezed his
Adam’s apple. I felt it buckle in there and bright pain danced in
his eyes. It sent him into action as I’d known it would.

He brought his right hand up, grabbed my
forearm, came down with his left, and twisted. I went with him
again.

“
Jim,” I said. “You’ll have to do
better than that.”

He did, breathing good and loud now. I was out
of condition. He cursed and said, “You guys!” Then he came at me
with his head. I brought my knee up gently against his nose. He
caught my leg and we landed on the sidewalk.

“
That’s it, Herbert,” he
said.

Something happened against the side of my
head. Then it happened again and the lawn in front of the Riverview
Sanitarium tipped up with the buildings way up there above me and I
started sliding toward the river.

Chapter 7

The steel legs of the cot were bolted to the
floor. The floor was cement. There was a smell in the room. Lysol,
maybe. The smell was damp, cool, vinegarish. But the room wasn’t
cool. It was hot and an arm of sunshine elbowed me in the face. It
was yellow and it was barred. There were two windows, barred. The
door was thick wood, with a small barred opening. It was
whitewashed as were the cement walls. I rolled over on the cot,
touched the wall nearest me. It was damp and flakes of warm-wet
pain and whitewash came away, dusting onto the mattress I lay
on.

Somewhere a woman sang in a hoarse, laughing
voice, “. . . right in the corner, where you are.”

My head didn’t ache, but I felt lethargic. I
felt like more sleep. I knew I’d been given a hypo, a sedative of
some kind. As I lay there, my mind came more awake.

Somebody walked by the door, stopped. More
footsteps.

“
He’s come around.”

I recognized Jim’s voice. The man I’d fought
with out on the front sidewalk. I swung myself to a sitting
position on the cot. A face moved away from the small barred
opening at the door.

“
Think he’ll eat?” somebody else
said. It was a woman.

“
God knows,” Jim said.

“
He should eat. It’s been three
hours. He didn’t eat lunch. You going in there?”

“
I dunno. He hadn’t messed the
place up any.”

I sat there, listening. I stared at the floor,
not the door, and let them talk.

“
You better check the commode,” the
woman said.

“
Yeah. Later,” Jim said.

“
He don’t look—that way. He looks
sane as you.”

“
Ever seen any of ’em
didn’t?”

“
Well, Isaac. He scared me
plenty.”

“
Hell, I could scare the pants off
you, Janie.”

Giggles. Sounds of a stiff cloth rustling and
fast breathing, then a sharp, lingering, feminine, meaningless,
“No!”

“
Ah-h-h,” Jim said. There was a
loud smack of hand against flesh, then an elastic snap. More
rustling and fast breathing. “So you do today,” Jim said. “Afraid
you’ll catch a cold?”

“
Shut up. Don’t! He
might—”

“
Nobody’d believe him,” Jim said.
“C’mon over here.”

“
Not now!”

“
Why not now?”

The other woman with the hoarse voice sang
again, “Nearer my God to the-e-e-e-e-e-e!”

“
Oh, Jim, you made me lose a
button.”

“
You’re in good company. C’mon,
Janie.”

“
Tonight.”’

Jim grumbled. “That’s right. We both work
tonight,” he said more lightheartedly.

“
Yes, and I’m dead
already.”

“
You’ll be dead, you rascal, you!”
the woman with the hoarse voice sang.

“
A lot she knows,” Janie
said.

“
She knows,” Jim said. “She told
me. She tried to get me yesterday. Said she’d fallen in love with
me.”

“
Oh, hell. I can’t find that
button.”

“
Let it hang open.”

“
Are you going to give him that
tray? I’ll be darned if I’ll give him this needle. You’ll have to.
Watkins said you’d have to if he looked queer.”

“
I gave him a helluva shot
before.”

“
What’s the matter with him,
really?” She gasped. “Stop it, Jim. Can’t you wait till tonight?”
She whispered, “My God, they’ll tell Watkins.”

“
He’s tough, is all,” Jim said.
“Thinks he wants to kill somebody, or something.” They both
laughed. There was a beating on the door.

“
He looks all right,” Janie
whispered. “Just tired.”

“
Hey, Eric,” Jim said. He was using
my first name now. That was nice.

“
Hurry up,” Jamie whispered. “I
want to get home. Two hours and we have to come back here. Damn
Lucy. Why’d she take sick?”

“
You hungry, Eric?” Jim
said.

I looked at him. “Come on in,” I
said.

His face went away from the small barred
window.

“
Better put it through the slot,”
Jamie said. “He looked at you awful funny.”

“
Hey, Eric,” Jim said. “You
scheming?”

There was a small square opening, closed with
a hinged door just below the barred opening of the window. This
must be the slot they’d referred to. It would be for passing things
through in case a patient was violent.

It was a fine thing, all right. Everything was
so messed up that I didn’t really feel any way at all. That would
come later.

“
Why don’t you come on in?” I said.
“Jim.”

“
You want to kill me?” Jim said.
Jamie gave a short laugh and said, “Stop it. You always tease
them.”

God, I thought. I’m insane, now. A hit-and-run
driver who has gone insane.

“
They always say that,” Jim said.
“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!”

“
Stop it, Jim.”

“
Eric, d’you feel that
way?”

“
Have you seen my wife?” I said.
“Has she been here?”

“
Yes, she’s been here. Your brother
was here, too.”

I didn’t say anything. There was a small white
bureau bolted to the wall and a commode in the corner of the room.
Leda had been.

“
Where is she?” I said.

“
She had to go,” Jim said. “But
she’ll be back, Eric. She said to tell you she’d be back tonight
sometime. After you felt better. After you eat something.
Hungry?”

“
What time tonight?”

“
Go ahead,” Janie
whispered.

A lock scraped and the door swung open. Jim
was carrying a tray with some tin dishes on it and he still needed
a haircut.

“
Why don’t you see a barber?” I
said.

He ignored that. “Time to eat,” he said. He
put the tray down beside me on the cot. I glanced toward the open
door. A girl, Janie, stood there, with half of her showing through
the opening. She had jet-black hair and a build that crowded her
white dress to the bursting point. Her red lips were formed into an
inquisitive, expectant O. Her dark eyes matched her mouth. Her
breasts showed through the material of brassiere and dress, and at
the end of her torso a button was missing from the dress, which
gaped open. Her right hand passed diffidently back and forth over
this bit of temptation. Her belly heaved and she carried a
cotton-wrapped hypodermic needle in her left hand.

“
Hello, Janie,” I said. She was
certainly prepared. For anything.

She smiled and held it, trying to avoid my
eyes.

“
You hungry?” Jim said. “You still
want to fight?”

“
Why am I in here?”

“
You wouldn’t go back to your room.
Remember?”

“
Yeah, but why here?” I stood up,
faced him. He backed away one step and his gaze flicked toward
Janie. She didn’t move.

“
You’ve got to cooperate, Eric,”
Jim said. “You want to feel right, don’t you?”

“
I feel right.”

“
Sure. Well, you’ll feel better.
You’ll just be here a little while, like that.”

We looked at each other. His eyes were trying
to smile but they were mean and there was nothing intelligent about
them. He was still a big guy and in better condition than
myself.

“
I asked to see a Detective
Redfern. He been around?”

Jim shook his head. “No. You won’t be able to
see anybody but maybe your wife, that’s all. For now, anyway.” He
cleared his throat. “Why don’t you eat something?”

Two days later, when Leda came to see me, I
was still in the locked room. It had been plenty bad and was
getting worse, what with Doc Barton’s silence and this locked room.
I’d seen or heard nothing of Leda until she came to the door that
day.

Jim let her in and closed the door on us. I
hadn’t caused any trouble and they were growing lax.

Leda looked hot and tired. “I’m sorry, Eric.
There’ve been so many things I had to do.”

“
Sure.” I was mad all the way, now.
The dream rode me and I wondered incessantly what people knew that
I didn’t.

Leda’s eyes were smoky, like they always got
when she wanted me. She was wearing shorts again. Yellow shorts, as
tight a fit as possible, and a thin fuzzy white sweater, which
stretched like rubber over her breasts. She wasn’t wearing a
brassiere. Her coppery hair was thick and I was mad, so when she
squeezed in close I grabbed her tightly.

She breathed out hard and I smelled whisky.
Her lips sought mine, searching almost frantically. She pressed
against me, leaning on me, pulling me toward the cot in the bare
room.

“
What the hell’s up?” I said,
holding her off.

“
Don’t,” she said. “I haven’t seen
you for two days.”

“
That’s your fault.”

“
Tell me later. There’s nobody
outside, darling.”

It had been lonely. It wasn’t lonely now.
There’d been a lot of things I’d wanted to tell her. I had wanted
to give her hell.

Now it was different, because Leda affected me
that way. I still wanted to give her hell. But that would be
different, too.

“
Why haven’t you been
around?”

“
I’m here, Eric. For God’s sake,
bawl me out later.”

We were on the cot, sitting, and she pulled me
down. We lay on the cot pressed tight together and she was
breathing like nothing I’d ever heard.

“
What gets you this way?” I
said.

“
Anticipation. I told that man to
leave us alone. There’s nobody around. Quit making me anticipate.”
She found my lips and kissed me with her whole body and the shorts
were so tight they felt like skin.

She arched her body and screamed way down in
her throat; and almost silent screeching.

I heard somebody whistling in the distance.
Then I didn’t hear anything but the thunder of blood.

Leda wasn’t a bit tired.

“
What got into you?” We were lying
on the cot. Leda sat up, looked at herself and laughed.

It was over now. She had been wonderful, but I
was alone again. Somehow even with her here, I was alone. The
whistling came by outside the building, nearing.

“
Get out of sight. Over there,” I
said, motioning her beside the door. A moment later Jim’s face
appeared at the small barred panel in the door.