The Edge of the Gulf (22 page)
Read The Edge of the Gulf Online
Authors: Hadley Hury
Sunday dawned indeterminately, the air heavy like warm milk.
Hudson and Moon loped through town and out onto the sand. No one was in sight. The lazy filtered sun, slanting along the beach, pulled barely discernible shadows beside them as they ran. The Gulf rose up as a solid mass, unrippled, a grayish celadon, too flat and seemingly transparent to be called silvery or metallic or blue, a filmy texture like waxed paper, rising up heavily and blending on some indistinguishable plane with the pallid midsummer sky. A single gull, low over the water, gave one desolate screech as it labored slowly through the stagnant heat, never landing on the water or sand, until it was absorbed at last, an ethereal nomad, by the rimless wash.
Hudson passed the morning reading, paid a visit to Susie and had a frozen yogurt at the Laurel Market in the early afternoon, and then tried to clear his mind of everything but work.
He didn’t know what else to do with himself.
Or with anything else in the world.
He forced himself to edit two articles.
Every word now seemed cast in the light of his unease, freighted and fraught, tinged with forebodings.
Indecipherable moral imperatives, inscrutable directives.
Evil Under the Sun
Breakdown
is an elegant, well-acted thriller
Breakdown
comes just in time to give us all some
serious
second thoughts about summer road trips. Driving through the expansively lonely, otherworldly beauty of the high Southwestern desert, on their way cross-country from Boston to a new home and new jobs in San Diego, a married couple, Jeff and Amy Taylor (Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan), end up in the middle of nowhere when their deluxe SUV grinds to a halt.
A mechanical malfunction that leaves you stranded alone in the desert under a broiling sun can be serious business. It is a measure of
Breakdown
’s powerful assurance as a thriller that we scarcely have time to register this reasonable daylight concern before it proves to be merely the dangling latch on a door that opens, as in a nightmare, to another door, and then, faster and faster, another and another, a yawning chasm of constantly escalating paranoia, terror, and unreasoning evil.
In his first theatrical release, director Jonathan Mostow, who co-wrote the script with Sam Montgomery, has melded several strong elements into an elegantly crafted film with a deceptively simple structure.
The through-line of the story is a tried and true formula: Jeff waits with the Jeep while the seemingly kind driver (J.T. Walsh) of an 18-wheeler gives Amy a lift to the nearest roadside diner. Amy does not return. A conspiracy of bad guys begins to emerge in the parched, desolate landscape, at first like a mirage, but eventually becoming an unrelenting, horrific reality. Jeff must figure out what’s going on, save himself, and find Amy.
It is
how Breakdown
handles its ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances, a favorite premise in Hitchcock’s thrillers, that sustains the film’s unsettling psychological suspense. It’s
why
the bad guys are bad,
how
the arid landscape is hostile,
why
the situation defies understanding, and
how
the protagonist (an average, peaceable guy who wears khakis and a polo shirt) becomes a quick-witted, death-defying hero, that give the film its edge
.
It has the rush of a ghost story expertly told late at night by a campfire, a breathless, headlong freefall through anxiety without a ledge to grip.
Basil Poledouris’ music, eerie synthesized staccatos that seem to skitter and echo around the desert rock formations, reinforces the director’s frequent use of deep focus and sweeping aerial shots which induce a sense of vertigo to match the hero’s panic.
Breakdown’
s atmospherics provide resonant context for the actors. Without divulging too much about the wonderful J.T. Walsh’s role and his band of bad guys, let’s just say that his dead-eyed malevolence has never been employed to more chilling effect. His character and his fellow brigands haunt the desert landscape like a miasma of inchoate evil, all the more disturbing because they tap into our escalating societal fear of the gulf between haves and have-nots that produces children who shoot one another over a pair of sneakers and increasing numbers of people who do harm for very little reason and without any shred of recognizable human compunction. (The Tates’ only crime is that they have a new vehicle with leather seats and a CD player and, though only middle-income folk, are
perceived
as having money.) These bad guys also share some frightening identity factors with the tunnel-visioned paranoia that nurtures the proliferation of extreme right-wing organizations.
Kurt Russell gives what may be the most compelling performance of his career to date. It’s a big role—Jeff is onscreen for most of the film’s two-hour duration—and Russell carries it very well, giving real emotional urgency to the character’s progression from bewilderment to panic and, eventually, fury.
He is in proud company here. Like Jimmy Stewart (in
Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much,
and
Vertigo
), Cary Grant (in
North by Northwest
), and Henry Fonda (in
The Wrong Man
), his Jeff Taylor is the sort of Everyman character Hitchcock utilized to ensure audience empathy with the hero’s baffling predicament, and Russell has the goods. Separated from his wife, he has the abject lostness of a little boy; forced into survival tactics, he has a ferocity that surprises even himself. The role dually functions as the psychological catalyst for the film’s mounting suspense and as the emotional catalyst for the audience’s pity, terror, and rage. And the range of Russell’s performance keeps it all on the boil.
At six-thirty, Charlie and Hudson met at the tennis club in Seaside to play a few sets.
Charlie had a fairly decent game and Hudson had warned him that not only was he out of practice but that he’d never been any good to begin with. “My idea of a tennis match is a Grand Slam event on television. It’s really the only sport I like to watch.” But they had a good time, Charlie serving and volleying at a pace that gave Hudson a good workout and very little embarrassment. They had the courts practically to themselves anyway. By late afternoon, the clouds had begun strafing in from the west and the wind was rising. They knocked off a few minutes before eight, just as the hot rain began to plaster their already soaked shirts.
They discussed whether to have a beer or something to eat but decided that after the late hour and abundant champagne of the night before, showers and an early evening at home were probably in order for both of them.
“At least we’ve gotten out here and mortified our flesh a little bit,” laughed Charlie as he waved and drove away.
At 11:20 the phone rang. Charlie had just watched a rental movie, one of Hudson’s recommendations, and gone into the kitchen to put away a few things.
“You said you never go to bed before midnight. I hope you meant that. The time got away from us. We went out to eat late.” It was Chaz. They had left around noon to make the two-hour drive to Tallahassee. Sydney had some “research to do in the university library” for one of her video projects.
“I was just on my way upstairs.”
“Hi, Charlie!” Sydney had taken the phone.
“Did you get what you needed at the library?”
“Some, not all. But it was worth the trip. I got enough to know what to look for when I get back to Atlanta.”
“How’s that bed-and-breakfast?”
“Oh. They were booked. We’re at some—” she laughed, “no-tell motel.”
Chaz got back on. “Well, we won’t keep you up. We’ll probably be in around four or five tomorrow.” Sydney said something inaudible. “Sydney says to tell you that we’re still pinching ourselves about our wedding gifts.”
“Well, they’re true. I love you both.”
“We love you.”
“Good night. See you tomorrow afternoon.”
***
He went out on the upper porch. Down at the seaward end, he closed and fastened the shutters that sometimes tended to slap in high winds. The storm had been advancing some pretty stiff waves of squall lines and he had seen on the Weather Channel that the worst was still to come.
Once he got into bed, fatigue took him. He managed only to flip through the week’s
New Yorker
, untouched since its arrival three days before, to see what he might want to come back to.
He turned out the light and lay back to enjoy the sound of the wind in the trees, but he scarcely managed to look at the clock before his eyes closed.
11:40.
***
Terry Main moved methodically, as though on a hike, as though his nerves were soothed by another round of slashing rain. He slogged along the overgrown and almost never used path. Even if the oversized shoes he wore were leaving traces of his passage through the swampy underbrush, they certainly wouldn’t be anything but a soggy, nebulous hint. A dog perhaps, a raccoon.
Deep in his pocket, under the protection of his poncho, was the first draft of Michael’s letter. In the pack on his back, two towels, dry shorts, tee shirt, socks, gloves, and another pair of running shoes two sizes larger than his own. The .380 Magnum. A couple of hundred or so yards behind him, through the dense woods and scrub that ringed the lagoon, his truck sat in a pull-in off 26-A overhung with oaks and nearly obscured by tall sawgrass. If the worst happened, he would say that in his haste to get over to Charlie’s he had forgotten that he needed gas. Had run out. Did the best he could trying to find his way through the woods on the old path that only a few locals knew about and even fewer ever used.
If everything went according to plan, he’d come back and get the ancient gas can he’d left buried under the top layer of garbage in a dumpster fifty yards down a nearby dead-end dirt road.
***
Small garden lanterns lined the long drive that circled at the front door and threaded west through the trees, but they provided only dull nubs of light every few yards in the thrashing wet darkness. Otherwise, there were, as usual, just the two lights on either side of the door and, around back on the lagoon side, two lights by the French doors into the solarium.
He looked in a side window that gave a view through the hall into the kitchen. Dark. He looked in another near the back corner. The dining room and, beyond, a long slice of the living room. Except for one small lamp near the foot of the stairs, dark. As usual, drapes not closed in the second floor bedrooms. No visible light anywhere on the second floor. No reading light from the master bedroom. He looked at his watch.
12:40.
Kneeling down behind a tall hibiscus, the downpour sheeting off the eaves of the house inches from his face, he waited another three or four minutes, listening. Only the choked sob of the wind in the pines and the wild eddies of tropical rain.
Then he took the key from his pocket and made his way to the French doors.
***
They had arranged two minor flukes with the alarm system, several days apart. The second incident, just yesterday, had prompted a call for service, scheduled first thing Monday morning.
He gently opened the door. There was no zone-sensor beep. He found the control panel down along the wall, behind the areca palm. He double-checked everything. When Charlie, who knew little about the system’s finer points, set it, it would have appeared to be in order. But his wiring job yesterday afternoon, which he had explained and they had re-checked before leaving for Tallahassee, would have rendered it useless.
He got out of his sodden shoes and clothing, stuffed them into the small backpack, and pulled on the dry ones. With the first towel he carefully mopped up the floor around himself and then the wet trail to the alarm panel. He used the other to dry his hair, face, and arms.
Then he stood, without moving, listening, for three or four minutes.
***
The heavy padded socks made the large shoes manageable. He kept to the hardwood floors, off the rugs, hugging the walls, risking a potential squeak rather than a footprint. He wanted to keep it neat. He didn’t want the police looking for an accomplice, size twelve shoe or otherwise. And the storm provided good sound cover. He took one step at a time, stopping after each step for a full half-minute to listen. The stairs were the biggest problem. The best option was to the right side of the runner, but the fourth and eleventh steps were dicey.
By the time he reached the long gallery that ran the length of the second floor, he was sweating profusely despite the cool air on his still damp hair.
1:00.
A large Palladian window at the end of the hall behind him allowed only the barest illumination from the porch lights below, evanescent wisps of radiance that managed to work their way up like wraiths around the portico, through the rain and tossing shrubbery.
He inched his way toward the open door of the master bedroom. A flash of lightning transformed the gallery into a black-and-white photograph that hung before his eyes even when, after a split second, the darkness returned. He froze. Then he backed into the guest room and waited for one minute, two minutes. He re-emerged. Listened. There was no sound, no light, from the master bedroom.
He made the last remaining feet to the door without breathing. He stood on the sill, lining up the bed with one eye. Half of his face, half of his body, one foot still outside the frame of the door.
The body in the bed did not move. Between the sighs of wind and rain, there came the sound of heavy, regular breathing.
He stepped back without a sound and glided diagonally across the wide hall to the walk-in linen closet and a slight, welcome scent of WD-40. The louvered door opened silently and he went in.
In the darkness, he regulated his breath, and waited. The pale glow of lightning seeped less and less frequently under the door and along its horizontal louvers, and the ragged rasps of thunder were more distant. There was just the sound of a silent sleeping house and the steady, calming murmur of the rain.
1:05.
Although it felt like two hours, he had been in the house for twenty minutes. In no more than another thirty, he wanted to be driving home.
With his gloved left index finger he counted the louvers in the top panel of the door. At the twenty-third, just at his eye level, he gently lifted. The slanted inch-wide wooden slat moved. No more than half an inch. Just enough for an uninterrupted view down the hall and into the master bedroom.
He removed the glove. With his right hand, he clicked the safety.
When the time came it would come instantaneously.
He flexed the muscles in his arms and hands.
He waited.
1:29.
A blunted sound, distant, perhaps downstairs, and, minutes later, the slow elastic creak of a yielding stair.
Then, nothing.
1:35.
A shadow, discernible only to eyes adjusted to the darkness, began to pulse, inch by inch along the floor from the right of the closet. Seconds later, Michael came abreast of the door, one foot testing each step of the way. His right hand lifted forward just above waist level, the gun poised.
There were two hushed exhalations of breath. Two words, repeated, that would have been inaudible beyond a few inches.
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”
He moved on, nearing the bedroom door, his back now to the closet. He hovered only a minute in the doorway and then stepped softly into the room. He took three quick steps toward the bed, leveled his arm, and went momentarily out of Terry’s field of vision.
***
Terry pushed outward with his left hand, gun raised in his right, and was already at the bedroom door as he heard the shot explode. He waited until Michael began to turn toward him and fired twice from less than ten feet. The first shot tore into his stomach and the second took the body on over, backward, from the impact to the chest.
Charlie lay, his left arm flung back, his lead lolling foolishly off the side of the bed, his mouth agape. The top of the sheet was a creeping dark stain. His eyes stared, unseeing, at a point just over Terry’s shoulder.
Terry forced himself to move. The blood was already beginning to seethe up from Michael’s body and flow onto the rug. He pulled on the gloves and took the letter from the pants pocket. He lay it over to one side, stained but legible. He lifted the shoulders, angling the torso and legs slightly toward the bed.
The quiet was enormous, almost overwhelming. Time itself seemed to fall into the gaping silence, as if ceasing to exist.
But it hadn’t ceased to exist because just as he finished arranging the body, there was a next thing and the next thing was not what he’d planned. The next thing was the faraway but unmistakable sound of a car, beyond the lessening rain, perhaps as far as the little road at the end of the long winding drive.
Perhaps already somewhere along the drive.
***
He rushed to the bed and looked down. The eyes gawked senselessly past him, enameled, opaque. There was no pulse.
He wiped the gun one more time and then folded it into the lifeless right hand.
He walked back to Michael, checked the angle of trajectory from the bed, adjusted the body slightly, looked again, and then flew down the stairs, avoiding the rugs and the traces of water and muck from Michael’s shoes. By the back doors, he stood for a minute, fighting to control his ragged breathing enough to listen.
The sound of the car, almost certainly out on the little-traveled road a hundred and fifty yards from the house, was fading into the rain.
Close enough.
In the dim light from the porch lanterns he took a last look down the shadowy hall to the dining room. He could just make out one end of the long mahogany table where, a couple of times, two, three years ago, he had been a part of Charlie’s parties.
As he put his hand on the door to let himself out, he saw at his feet the wet paper bag, its top rolled down, creased and wrinkled. Knowing what he would find, he opened it. A jagged hunk of red cedar. A new tin of Spice Islands marjoram. A spool of red thread. A bowl. The carcass of a dead sparrow. Just outside the door, on the broad top step under the overhang, sat an old rusted cage that looked as though it came from a salvage shop. A small sandpiper cheeped in confusion, jerking its head from one side to the other, apparently terrified from the rough trek and by the water rushing down inches from its prison.
He set it just inside the door.
***
The big shoes took him down to the edge of the lagoon. He went back the way he had come, wading knee-deep in the shallows for more than a hundred yards along the shoreline. To a tall live oak pine with its roots gnarling into the water and a broken lower branch. Another fifty yards through bruising, clawing undergrowth and sinkholes, and he picked up the old path. For long stretches, hardly any better.
He made sure no other errant vehicles were plying the last of the storm, and crossed the highway. He pulled the gas can from the forgotten dump, fed a gallon into the truck, and began to drive.
He made a quick sidetrack from 26-A onto the road that meandered through the woods to Charlie’s drive. Only because he knew where to look, he saw Michael’s truck, obscured by a wall of scrub oak, fifty yards from the entry to the drive. He’d walked straight up the drive as planned, and was going to take the time afterward for his “ritual.” Ignorance and hatred, ignited by even the slightest touch of madness, could make for an unwavering flame of devotion. And the devout do nothing better than follow instruction.
He was home at 2:25.
It hadn’t been perfect. Too rushed at the end. Who could have expected anybody to drive along that road in the middle of the night in a storm?
But nothing had really gone wrong.
Nothing that would suggest two people had been involved.
Nothing obvious. And certainly nothing to implicate
him
.