The Pledge (44 page)

“And you?”

“What have I done? You're a free man. You're my husband. You're leaving at an odd hour, so what?”

“And once we're in the car? What then?”

“The tickets will be bought for an early plane out of Charleston to Chicago, takeoff at eight A.M. Charleston is about a hundred and twenty-five miles from the prison, and between one o'clock and eight o'clock, seven hours — it's a lead pipe cinch. I'll bring you a long raincoat and a gray wig. You take off your glasses.”

“Gray?”

“Not all gray. Streaked, you know. I'll wear a black wig. Just to delay the description. They may look for you in the morning, but they won't look too hard, will they?” Molly asked.

“Hard to say.”

“You could trust —” She paused. “I don't know. Who could you trust?”

“Legerman?”

“Maybe. I think so. Maybe better to trust no one. Well, say they're ready to report you missing by nine?”

“I see what you mean. Why do we go to Chicago and what do we do when we get there?”

“My Aunt Constance — Mom's sister — lives in Chicago. I talked to her. She has a large old house. We go there and stay for a while. Joe and Mary will come out. They'll dye our hair, both of us. You grow a beard. We have plenty of money — Sylvia has power of attorney and will know where we are. If we stay a month, this will cool down and we'll go to Mexico. Mexico will not allow political refugees to be extradited. This has to change. This craziness can't go on forever, and we'll just wait it out. You can write and I'll have children —”

Bruce shook his head hopelessly.

“Bruce, what's the alternative?”

“Take our chances with the courts.”

“We've taken our chances with the courts. What damned chance do we have? Twelve frightened people, all of them working for the government, all of them with their brains churned into mush, and all of them convinced that a communist is worse than the devil himself—”

“You mentioned a change of venue.”

“Maybe, maybe — but, my darling, if they get you, it's over. They wouldn't grant bail. They want you out of their hair. That little bastard Hoover, well, no one dares face him or stand up to him or to McCarthy. You know that fat little guy — Parnell Thomas? The one on the committee? Well, the story goes that he began to prepare a file on J. Edgar, and believe me, there is plenty to prepare, and what did Hoover do but open his own file and indict the congressman. That's the way it is. Do you want to go into the courts?”

Bruce still shook his head. You didn't do things like that. It had not come to that. He stared at the woman sitting beside him — the cheeks more hollow, lines about her mouth, the dark mark of sleeplessness under her eyes.

“How much weight have you lost?” he demanded.

“Oh, the hell with my weight. We're talking about your life.”

“What would you do if they convicted me?”

“I wouldn't have to kill myself. I'd be dead already. What the hell is wrong with you? Those damn bourgeois illusions of yours have you by the throat! You're still a goddamn Eagle Scout! Nothing changes with you! They could chop your hands off and you'd wave the bloody stumps and sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner'! God damn you! God damn you! I didn't need you. I was doing fine, just fine. I didn't have to give you my life, and now you have it —” She broke into tears, sobbing hysterically. He put his arms around her and held her tight.

“Please, baby, don't — no, no, please. I'll do it. We'll talk about it. We have to put it together more carefully.”

She dabbed at her eyes. “I wore this damn eye makeup. I wanted to look beautiful for you, and now it's running and just look at me.”

“I am. You're the best and most beautiful thing that ever came into my life.”

She had the mirror out of her purse. “I look like a clown, an oversized redheaded clown.”

“No. You look lovely.” He whispered, “You look like all my best dreams.”

Pulling away from him, she said softly, “I'm all right now. Let's go through it again.”

“You'll be alone?”

“Just me.”

“Can you do it? It seems so damn complicated.”

“Oh, no — no, baby. It is not complicated. When I leave you here, I'll drive to Charleston and buy the airline tickets. Allegheny has two morning flights to Chicago, and I'm told they're rarely sold out. I'll buy two tickets on the morning flight.”

“Suppose the airport is socked in? There's a lot of fog in these West Virginia mountains, especially in the morning. Suppose they stop all flights?”

“They'll stop incoming flights and put them into a holding pattern, but it's a very rare thing for an airport to stop the takeoffs. And if that happens, we drive. We'll drive straight on to Chicago.”

“Wait a minute,” Bruce said. “Why not drive? Why not drive the whole distance?”

“I thought of that. It's over five hundred miles, and it means going through the mountains, and the last thing in the world we want is to be picked up for speeding. Twelve to fourteen hours. We lose the whole time advantage. By flying, we'll be in Chicago by ten o'clock.”

“Yes, that makes sense —” If any of it made sense. On the other hand, the fact of life imprisonment was beginning to sink in. Death he could grapple with and face; life imprisonment was another matter entirely. He called to mind a moment in the District prison during the days he had spent there. How clearly he remembered the man sitting cross-legged, dealing cards, his life force, his energy condemned to rot in prison forever. They would not do it to him; he had made that vow to himself. They would never do it to him, because he would die first.

“Bruce?”

“We'll do it,” he said. “If you're there, I'll be there.”

“Trust me,” she said. “I'll be there.”

“THE NIGHT
THAT COVERS ME”

   

T
WENTY-FOUR HOURS
after Molly had gone back to New York, Bruce was ready to dismiss the whole thing as romantic madness. To make his way out of the camp at midnight, to be picked up by Molly, to flee to Chicago and hide with her aunt; this was absurd — utterly and totally absurd. Such things were not done, and if they were done, they were not done by Bruce Nathaniel Bacon, and it was childish to imagine that they could get away with it, hide in Chicago, and someday make their way to Mexico. What would they do in Mexico? Bruce knew that people left their native land and lived their lives in other countries, but these were strange beings, unlike himself, and for him to leave the United States and live elsewhere was as unthinkable as death.

And death was unthinkable; otherwise, man would have gone mad in every generation. That was why he could face the thought of death, even romanticize it, because it was unreal; but the sense and quality of prison was very real indeed, not so much this strange prison camp in the West Virginia mountains as that cell in the District prison where he had spent those first days. That prison, with its electric gates, its club-carrying guards and tiny cells and holes where a prisoner suffered solitary confinement, its choking sense of hellishness, its foul smell of urine and excrement — that prison was very real indeed.

The first few nights after Molly's visit, he could not sleep at all. Each night was a blurred and endless dream, with every incident of past, present, and future crushed and scrambled, and question after question to be asked without answers. Like a person with a terminal disease, he longed for sleep and his mind refused the pleading. The world had crushed him too meanly, and he lived and suffered the desolate loneliness of all the men and women who had been imprisoned since man invented civilization and, concurrently, the jail. In prison, you were alive and dead at the same time. The luck that gave him the garage and heavy work from morning to night, to exhaust his body and numb his mind, would not be repeated. He would live his life in an iron cell. Like a pendulum, back and forth:

No, never. He would make the run with Molly.

No, that was insane. How could he drag Molly into this horror? He would trust the courts.

No, that was hopeless. He had trusted a court.

And how did he even know that there was a hold on him? How did Molly know? She said it came from Sylvia. How did Sylvia know?

He had to do it, if only because there was no way to get in touch with Molly. She would not return for another visit. Why hadn't he figured out some signal?

Then, one fine October evening, Warden Demming took him aside as he left the mess hall. “Bacon, let's walk a piece. I have some things to tell you.”

Bruce nodded and joined the warden. They strolled slowly up the pathway that led to the Administration Building.

“Your release date is October twelfth. I'm sure you're well aware of that.”

Bruce nodded.

“Your wife was here. Your attorney knew about it, so I imagine your wife told you.”

“I'd like to hear it from you,” Bruce said dully.

“Well, it's most peculiar. On the day of your release, they're sending a Federal marshal down from Washington to take you to the grand jury sitting there — I mean in Washington. They'll hand you a subpoena, and then take you to Washington by car. Now I don't know why, except that it's one of those damned secret CIA affairs. I've watched you for a year now. I respect you and I like you — but God Almighty, Bacon, I am only the warden of a tiny prison. I don't know what goes on in the so-called higher levels of this nation, and so help me, I don't want to know.”

“But if my sentence is up,” Bruce said slowly, “then it's up. I've served my time. On October twelfth, I'm a free man.”

“Yes …” uneasily.

“Suppose that on that day, I just walked out of here.”

“I have an order to hold you.”

“You mean you'll arrest me?”

“No, I have no right to arrest you.”

“But if I walk out?”

“I would have to restrain you.”

“How?”

“That's a damnfool question, Bacon. You know that. We have handcuffs here.”

“Is it legal? Can you just cuff me and tie me up? Is that legal?”

Frustrated, angry at himself, at Bruce for putting him in this position, at a system that did things that made no sense whatsoever, Demming snapped, “How the hell do I know whether it's legal or not? I do what I have to do.”

Bruce nodded and started to turn away. Demming grabbed his arm. “Bacon — for Christ's sake, Bacon, I don't like this damn thing. I wish to heaven there was something I could do.”

“Yes. Thanks,” Bruce said.

Demming held out his hand and Bruce took it. Then Demming stalked away toward the Adminitration Building, and Bruce walked back to the barracks.

Hal Legerman was waiting outside the barracks. “You've been in deep trouble for three or four days now.”

“Just anxiety. I'm close to the end of the line.”

“Bullshit, Bruce. What did the warden want?”

“Let it drop.”

“Sit down here for a minute or two. It's a beautiful evening. We'll watch the sunset.”

“I'm in no mood for sunsets.”

“Do it for me. For an old friend.” Bruce shrugged and sat down next to him. “I know you're out of here in another week, and then it may be five years more before we see each other again, because I'm going back to Los Angeles, and if you have any sense, you'll keep your beautiful Molly right beside you. Which deserves a brief homily.”

“You're an odd character, Harold.”

“You can say that again.”

“Homily. Homily.” Bruce grinned, the first time in days. “Where did you go to college?”

“You never asked me that before,” Legerman said. “You know, you never asked me one damn thing about my past or who I was.”

“In Calcutta, nobody has a past. The present is too absorbing.”

“Homily. Do you need a college education for that? A dictionary will do as well. A homily is a moral discourse. Our friend Duprey casts a cool eye on my morality, but I always carry a piece of it around, mostly in my back pocket. I never went to college. My father wasted his life over a machine in a sweatshop, and my mother died of hunger, misery, and tuberculosis. There's all the background anyone needs. Now let me get to the homily —”

“If you must,” Bruce said.

“I must. Now here it is. I met an Indian diplomat in L.A., and we got to talking about this famine that brought us together and which has given you so much grief. Oh, he agreed with all our conclusions, and in fact he assured me that there was ample evidence of the conspiracy. That being the case, I asked him why the government of India, newly liberated from the shackles of colonialism, did not broadcast to the world that a crime of unbelievable dimensions and horror had taken place. Can you guess what he said?”

Bruce shook his head. “No, I can't. We've talked about this before. I don't mean to put you down, Hal. I like you and respect you, but right now my brains are addled and I'm a pale, neurotic imitation of the man you met when you came to this place.”