The Traveller (29 page)

‘I’m going to be sick,’ Anne Hampton said, ‘If you’re sick,’ Jeffers replied, his glance narrowing, but his voice taking on a flat tone better suited to a discussion of the weather or rising prices, ‘everyone dies.’ She clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut. She gulped in air.

‘We were talking about publicity,’ she said. ‘About telling the world when you’ve got something to sell. Like his boy’s mechanical ability.’

Publicity fuels the world,’ Jeffers said. ‘Just as much as Arab oil.’ He looked quickly at her. She turned away and saw the roadway stretch in front of them. He was steering the car up the ramp, back toward the interstate. ‘I’m okay,’ she said, and she thought: I must be. She looked over at Jeffers and saw that he seemed to have relaxed. He was smiling faintly.

‘Good Boswell,’ he said. ‘When you feel good enough, write it all down in the notebook. Exciting, no? Especially the bit with the trooper, huh? Gets the adrenaline flowing.’

Jeffers hummed and gunned the engine. Again, she did not recognize the tune, but she hated it nonetheless.

As Douglas Jeffers drove, he daydreamed halfheartedly. Anne Hampton had grown silent beside him, staring out the window with what he thought was a desirable vacancy He did not want her imagination moving too swiftly. She was still vulnerable to the strengths she had inside her That she was unaware of them was typical, he thought. She could still break the spell and make some move for freedom, or perform some act that would jeopardize the trip, but her ability to do this would diminish, he knew. It already had been halved, perhaps quartered. Within a day or so, he considered, it will have evaporated save for a dangerous residue which he must always be aware of. Even the most domesticated, cowed, and docile beast will sometimes, when least expected, slash back at the threat of’ extinction. He resolved to be on his guard for signs of this. Whether they would ever surface he knew was problematical. For a moment he wondered whether she was aware of any of the literature of possession. Certainly, he thought, she’s read John Fowles. Did she remember Rubashov and his interrogators? Should he tell her about the Stockholm Syndrome? He thought he would, perhaps a little later. Knowledge, when wielded properly and dangerously, he considered, can be used to further confuse and obfuscate the truth. It would increasingly underscore her helplessness if he told her that psychologically she was caught in a web from which she was not equipped to free herself. Deepen her despair. He looked over at her, examining her profile as she steadily searched the horizon from the car seat. He tried to see a glow of independence, smell a whiff of resolve. No, he thought, not her.

I’ve taken it. As I knew I would.

She has given in.

I can do with her what I please.

He almost laughed out loud, stifling the sound before it emerged, like some schoolboy who had been passed a dirty gesture behind the teacher’s back.

She is like clay now. I can form whatever I want. He

wondered idly whether she had any inkling that her life

had changed completely, that she would never be the same,

or ever be able to return to what she had once envisioned

for herself.

To himself he said: No one’s going home again.

He thought of the stricken look on her face when she’d ignored the trooper. It had terrified her, he thought. By

tomorrow she will be so wrapped up that she will be more frightened of the police than I am. And I’m not frightened

at all.

He smiled, inwardly, but with just a trace on his lips. She’s mine.

Or at least she will be within twenty-four hours. His mind danced with possibilities. What an education she’s about to get, he thought. No harder than my own.

A memory picture crept quickly into his mind, aggressively, univited. He saw himself at age six, being led through

the night by the druggist and his wife. He remembered

how surprised he’d been at the sight of the house. It seemed

to his child’s eyes to be huge, imposing, and dominating.

He’d been afraid, and remembered how important it had

been not to let Marty see how scared he was. It was not

at all like the hotel rooms and trailer parks that his mother

had dragged them through. His first mother, he thought.

For a moment he thought he could smell the battling odors

of perfume and alcohol that came back to him whenever

she entered his memory. He reached down and cracked

the window, letting some air into the car, fearing that

he would sicken with all the hatred that churned in his

stomach.

The air cleared the memory smell away and he thought of the first look up the flight of stairs to their room. He recalled how tightly Marty had gripped his hand. It had been dark and the few lights the druggist had switched on

threw odd shapes on the walls. He could not actually recall climbing the stairs, though they had. But what he remem bered next was being half-led, half-pushed into the tiny room. The walls were whitewashed and there were two army cots unfolded. There was a single lamp, which had no shade. There was a single window which was open letting cold air pour into the room.

It had been bleak and sterile, he thought.

He forced himself a smile. It was not a response to pleasure, but an allowance of irony. That had been the first battleground, he thought. Marty had been exhausted and fallen instantly into sleep. But I stared at the walls. In his memory he saw the morning confrontation:

Can we put something on the walls?

No.

Why not?

You’ll make a mess.

We won’t. We’ll be careful.

No.

Please.

Stop whining! I said no! That’s it. No!

It’s not like a room. It’s like a prison.

I will teach you now that you’re not to talk to me that way.

It had been his first beating. First of many. He thought it odd that he felt an absence of emotion when he remembered the flailing fists and staggering blows that this new father poured down on him. His mind filled with hatred, though, when he thought of how this new mother sat by so quietly. Damn her eyes! he thought abruptly. She did nothing! She sat and watched. She always sat and watched. She said nothing, did nothing.

He hesitated, as if catching a mental breath.

Damn her eyes to hell!

His memory filled again, like holding a cup beneath a spigot. He’d been shunted off to a new, strange school for the remainder of the day. That had been a horror in itself. But what he remembered best was the morning art class, where he’d seized the biggest sheet of white paper they’d

had and quickly, deliberately, smeared great bands of blue

and orange, red, yellow, and green across it, swiftly making

a great glowing rainbow. Then he’d grabbed another paper

and fashioned a steamship tossing on a wild gray sea. Then

a pirate captain, with a red sash, black beard,

and Jolly Roger in his hands. He’d left the paintings drying

and returned that afternoon to ask the teacher if he might

take them. When she approved, he took them and ran to

the bathroom. Locking himself in a stall, he dropped his

pants and carefully wrapped the paintings around his leg.

He remembered the stiff walk home. Why are you

limping, asked his new mother. I fell at school, he said. It’s

aching. Feels better already. He’d hopped up the stairs to

their room, where he found Marty trying to play on the

floor with an empty shoe box. He remembered his brother’s

smile when he’d pulled out the paintings and stuck them,

with stolen school tacks, on the druggist’s careful white

walls. He remembered Marty’s sudden wide smile and it

made him grin in pleasure: A boat, his brother had cried,

to take us back to Mommy!

That’s been a long voyage, Jeffers thought.

One that we’re still on.

He eased the car past a large truck with an engine that roared deafeningly, penetrating the silence of the car’s cockpit. He saw Anne Hampton flinch at the sudden assault of sound. He swung the car back into the right lane easily

as the truck disappeared behind them and continued down the roadway, forcing his mind back to an easy nothingness,

as if, he thought, he could make his own mind as blank and horrible as those damned white walls, vacant, forgetting that which he’d seen, that which he’d done, and that which he still planned to do.

They swept past the outskirts of New Orleans as the early—

afternoon sky started to darken and Anne Hampton saw

great gray storm clouds fill the horizon. She noticed that

Jeffers seemed to accelerate as the weather worsened, and

when the first large raindrops splattered against the windshield, he reached for the wipers switch with a muffled curse of irritation.

She said nothing, having learned that he would speak when he wanted to. After a moment he broke the silence, proving her prudence justified.

‘Damn,’ he said. ‘This fucking rain’s going to make things difficult.’

‘Why?’

‘Harder to find landmarks in the rain. It’s been a long time since I was here.’

‘Can you tell me where we’re going?’

He was silent.

‘Will you? But only if you want…’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you. We’re heading toward a place called Terrebonne, which is a coastal parish. A little ways past a little town called Ashland. I haven’t been here, since well, since August eight, 1974. This is why anything, like the weather changing, or a new road, and God knows all the roads seem damn new, can screw me up.’

Anne Hampton looked out the car windows at the swampy marshland interspersed with pine stands and an occasional willow tree. It seemed to be a place of prehistoric terrors, and she shivered.

‘It looks really wild.’

‘It is. It’s a fantastic place. Like another planet. Lonely. Forgotten. Isolated. I really liked it when I was here.’

For a moment then she thought that her heart stopped. Her throat closed as if someone had wrapped his hands around her neck. Her mouth went completely dry.

It’s where he means to kill me, she thought.

She tried to open her lips to speak but could not.

She knew she had to fill the sudden silence, and she raced through her mind, trying to think of something to say that would fill the cockpit when all she wanted to do was scream. Finally she spoke, instantly regretting the weakness and the vapidity of her words.

‘Do we have to go there?’ she asked.

She thought she sounded like a whining child.

Why not?’ he replied.

I don’t know, it just seems, I don’t know, out of the

way.’

‘That’s why I selected it.’ She saw him glance over at her. ‘You’re not taking this down,’ he said irritatedly. She reached for the pen and notebook, but her hands were shaking again and the words on the pages were blurred and unreadable.

He hit her then, swiftly, the flat of his hand hardly seeming to move from the rim of the wheel. She gasped, dropped the pen, and using every ounce of presence of mind, instantly reached down and seized the pen again, The pain barely registered. ‘I’m ready now,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to stop being so stupid,’ he said. ‘I’m trying.’ Try harder.’

‘I promise. I promise I will.’ ‘Good. There’s still hope for you.’ ‘Thank you. It’s just, just…’

She couldn’t form the words and she gave in to the quiet that took over. She listened to the engine sounds mingling with the slap, slap of the wipers and wondered what it would feel like when it happened.

‘Dumb Boswell,’ Jeffers said after a few moments had paused by. He thought idly of reassuring her, letting her know that he still had plans for her. But then he thought better of it. Better to have the occasional tears than to have her gain any confidence. ‘You should think less on the longlevity of life and more on the quality.’ She nodded.

‘Get that down,’ he said. ‘Aphorisms. The word according to Jeffers. Poor Douglas Jeffers’ Almanac. The writings of Douglas Jeffers. That’s your job.’ Of course,’ she said.

They drove on and she felt inundated by the rain, the darkness and fear.

‘You know where we’re going, Boswell?’ JefTers asked.

Then he answered his own question. ‘We’re going to visit an old friend. Don’t you think sometimes that memories are like old friends? You can summon them up much as you would reach for a telephone. They come into your consciousness and comfort you.’

‘What if they’re bad memories?’ Anne Hampton asked.

‘Good question,’ he replied. ‘But I think, in their own way, bad memories are as helpful as the good. You measure these things on an internal scale, your own set of weights and balances. The nice thing about bad memories is that, well, they’re memories, aren’t they? You’re past them. On to something new…

‘In a way, I suppose, I don’t rate memories. I see them all as part of an overall picture. Like taking a long time-exposure, like one of those fancy National Geographic shots, you know, where the camera records the blooming of a flower or the hatching of an egg.’

She wrote that down.

Jeffers laughed coldly.

‘We’re heading toward where the new Douglas Jeifers hatched.’ He craned forward in his seat, peering up into the enveloping gray sky. ‘One of the dark places on earth,’ he said. He glanced over at Anne Hampton. ‘You know who wrote that?’

She shook her head.

‘Actually someone wrote it, but a character said it. Who?’

He snorted, almost with humor.

‘You’re an English lit major, c’mon. Can’t let some battered old newshound outquote you. Think!’

She raced through her memory.

‘Shakespeare?’

He laughed. ‘Too obvious. Modern.’

‘Melville?’

‘Good guess. Closer.’

‘Faulkner? No, too short… uh,1 Hemingway?’

‘Think of the sea.’

‘Conrad!’

Jeffers laughed and she joined him.

After a minute she asked, ‘Why are we going to one of the dark places on earth?’

‘Because,’ Jeffers said, matter-of-factly, ‘that’s where I discovered my heart.’