A Hidden Place

Chapter Thirteen

Nancy spent the next day at the switchman’s shack waiting for Travis to arrive, leaping up with a mixed gladness and terror whenever she heard a sound outside.

“He might come,” Anna admitted, her white stick-fingers laced in her lap. “If he does, he will have taken a step away from being—” She hesitated. “The thing he might have become.” “He’ll be here,” Nancy said. Anna was visible in the band of daylight falling through the open door. No one would mistake her for human now, Nancy thought. The Change had progressed too far. It was, Anna had explained, the natural sloughing-off of her humanity. But her need, the sickness of her separation from Bone, was also visible. The exaggerated orbit of her joints, the wildness of her eyes and the thinness of her lips, had only emphasized her decline. Nancy looked at her and thought of a child’s toy, one of those loose-jointed slat puppets connected by bits of string… but made of china or porcelain rather than wood, and with bright blue balls of glass for eyes.

“He might,” Anna said, “but he might not. You should be prepared for that.”

Her plain prairie accent, coming from that body, was like a bad joke. But no, Nancy thought, not really. The voice, for all its plainness, was high and lilted, a kind of song, like singing heard far off on a summer night, and it was that voice, the reassurance of it, that helped keep Nancy sane through all this. Physically Anna was frighteningly strange; she was alien, now unmistakably so; but that wonderful half-familiar voice contained a calming cadence, a necessary link to the known.

“He’ll come,” Nancy said, and: “What do you mean—a step away from being what!”

“He’s two people. You must have seen that. Part of him is the Travis who has been so often hurt and victimized, and that part of him is sympathetic. He wants to help. But there is this other Travis Fisher, the Travis Fisher who believes in a kind of female purity, who believes that women ought to be pristine, above nature, incorruptible—all the things he thought I was.”

“Or the things you chose to show him.”

“Maybe I deluded him. If so, it was not by choice. It’s in my nature to be a mirror. Like Creath, he looked at me and saw a hidden part of himself.”

It was at such times, Nancy thought, that Anna seemed most wholly alien. Her eyes grew distant, as if she were looking directly into Travis’s skull, peering somehow into the coral growths of his unconscious mind. Nancy had taught herself something about modern psychology; yes, she thought, there is some truth in all this. “He believed in you.”

“He thought I was that woman. But he wanted you to be that woman, too. The woman he once believed his mother was.”

His mother, Nancy thought, yes, my God. “He must feel—betrayed—”

“Betrayed and angry. And that’s the other part of Travis Fisher: this huge anger. A part of him hates us—hates both of us—for not being pure enough or good enough.”

“There were times,” Nancy said, nodding, “the way he’d look at me—”

“He suppresses the hate, of course. He believes in chivalry. And unlike Creath he is not by nature cruel. But the hate has had a good deal of trauma to feed on. It could displace his better instincts.”

“But if he understood—”

“It’s not as simple as that. All this lives in the deepest part of him.”

“Phantoms,” Nancy said scornfully. “Ghosts.”

Anna shrugged. “Travis’s virtuous woman is a kind of ghost, yes. Like your ghost.” Nancy frowned. “The ghost,” Anna went on, “of your father. Or the man you invented out of the memory of your father. The ghost you’ve been trying to placate all these years. …”

“I thought you couldn’t read minds.”

“Only the deepest parts.” After a moment: “I’m sorry.” Her voice was faint. “I shouldn’t have spoken.”

Nancy was astonished to find her eyes filling with tears. She dabbed her face with the wrists of her blouse. It was all crazy, of course. Anna was not human,- Travis was right; she could hardly be expected to understand how real people thought or felt. “It’s not really like that.” She turned back defiantly. “He was—he—”

But Anna held up her hand, pleadingly. “Truly, I’m sorry. I have to rest now.”

Nancy went out into the meadow—the sun was disturbingly low in the sky—to wait for Travis. He would come. He must. But the meadow was empty and the wind cut through this threadbare winter coat like a darning needle. She hugged herself and went back to the meager shelter of the switchman’s shack. Inside, she let her head loll against the fibrous wallboards and closed her eyes. When she opened them she gasped.

Anna was convulsing.

Her eyes had rolled up into her head. Her skin, always alarmingly pale, was dead-white now, blood-drained. The convulsions traversed her body; her spine bucked and arched over the thin stained mattress… “Anna!”

This was not the Change, Nancy thought dazedly, this was something else. Something new, something worse. She put her arm around the alien woman to steady her.

The contact was electric. So quickly that she could not steel herself, her mind was filled with hideous images.

The earth lurching under her feet. Fear. Fear and the footsteps behind her. A train roaring blackly in the near distance. The cold wind, the footsteps, the gun, the shockingly loud sound of it, pain invading her body in huge radiant arcs—

—and she was distantly aware of the scream that filled the confined space of the shack: it might have been Anna’s, or hers, or both.

Liza Burack picked up the phone on the second ring. She had been answering telephones more eagerly this autumn now that she had come to believe in the possibility of good news. “Yes?”

“Liza!” the voice on the other end boomed out. “This is Bob Clawson!”

She had not seen him since the Rotarian picnic four years ago, but Liza remembered the high-school principal well: the ample belly, the prissy three-piece suit he had worn, coat and all, all through that hot July day, fearful of betraying his dignity to the handful of high-school students who had shown up with their parents. “Good to hear your voice,” Liza said courteously. “Can I help you?”

“Actually, it was Creath I wanted to speak to.”

“Creath is putting in an extra hour at the ice plant.”

“Bull for work? Eh? Well, that’s good. That’s fine. I can call again another time.”

“May I tell him what this is about?” Liza was curious now, because Bob Clawson was town council, Bob Clawson was white collar, Bob Clawson didn’t phone up just anybody… and at that long-since picnic he had avoided the Buracks the way he might have avoided a rabid dog.

“Just a little group some of us are getting together,” Clawson said amiably. “I heard about your speech at the Women last week. Meat and potatoes Americanism, my wife tells me. Not enough of that going around these days.”

“Bad times,” Liza said automatically.

“Some of us are more than a little concerned.” Liza imagined who “some of us” might be: Bob Clawson knew every judge and lawyer and realtor in the county. “We wanted to get together, talk about doing something to protect the town. Thought Creath might be interested.”

She felt a small thrill run through her. Of course, their rehabilitation could not be complete so soon_; Clawson must have some secondary reason for wanting Creath, some dirty work he wanted done. But it was a stepping stone. She thought, we are at least on probation.

“I’m sure Creath will be anxious to talk to you,” she said.

“Well, I appreciate that, Liza.”

“Yes.”

“Good talking to you. I’ll call back, then.”

“Yes.” She thought of asking for his number but decided against it: better not to appear too anxious. “Thank you,” she said.

She hung up the phone and leaned a moment on the dust mop, waiting for her heart to calm its aggravated beat.

Everything was happening so quickly!

The evening was naturally anxious. Creath absorbed the news without visible reaction—only smoked his cigars and played the big Atwater-Kent radio. But Liza could tell by the way he held the paper creased in thirds, not turning the pages, that it was on his mind.

The phone rang at half past eight. Creath waited for Liza to pick it up. Bob Clawson. She passed the receiver to her husband; he motioned her out of the parlor and pushed shut the door with his foot.

Liza lingered in the hallway. She was not eavesdropping. Her posture was erect, disdainful. Still, she thought, words have a way of slipping through doors.

Tonight, however, Creath’s tone was suppressed; the conversation went on a maddeningly long time, but all Liza heard was “yes” and “no” and … if she had made it out correctly… one other word.

By nine Creath was out of the parlor. He went directly to the kitchen and poured a drink of water from the tap. From the way the veins stood out on his face Liza guessed he would have preferred hard liquor. “What is it,” she said, “what?”

“Nothing much,” Creath said: but it was the same falsely casual tone in which he had customarily lied to her about Anna Blaise (a memory she quickly suppressed). “Just Bob Clawson getting together some bullshit—pardon me—some two-bit smoker. Bunch of men griping about the Red Menace. Harmless, I guess.” lie took a big swallow of water. “Guess I’ll go.”

Liza nodded dutifully. Secretly, however, she retained her suspicions. She did not think “two bit” would describe any organization Bob Clawson would ever bother to get involved with.

And as for “smoker”—well, that was possible. Anything was possible. But the word that had drifted through the parlor door had not sounded much like “smoker” or “two bit.”

The word Liza had heard was “vigilante.”

Later that evening Liza got a phone call of her own: Helena Baxter calling to let her know that the votes from the last meeting had been counted; that the results were not official, of course, until the announcement the following weekend, but—speaking strictly off the record—it looked like Liza had won a landslide victory.

Travis watched the switchman’s hut from the reedy bank of the Fresnel River, dusk gathering around him like the cupped palms of two huge black hands. He hadn’t eaten for two days—his money had run out and there had been nothing to scrounge at the hobo jungle—and voices circled like birds inside him.

He was not sure how he had come to this. He was dead broke, his clothes were torn and stiff with dirt, the only way he had of washing himself was to dip his body in the frigid river water. All this was foreign to him. Mama had always been scrupulously clean; she had kept their small house soaped and dusted and aired. The thought created in him a wave of nostalgia so physical it left him weak-kneed. And his traitorous memory chose that moment to echo back something Creath had said (it seemed like) a long time ago: Well, we all know where that path inclines, I guess.

Nancy and Anna had brought him to this, he thought. Broke, hungry, cold… and without the simple willpower necessary to hop a freight and put some miles in back of him. He knew what was happening in the town, he had not needed Nancy to tell him that; he had been down The Spur twice, spending the last of his pocket money on food, and on both occasions he had been paced out by the police. The jungle was overdue for a rousting—possibly, given the mood in Haute Montagne, a violent one. He should leave. There was nothing for him here.

But he gazed at the shack where Nancy was. Nancy and the Anna-thing.

Suppose, he thought, we do help her (posing the question aloud, though there was no one to hear him here in the tall grass)—suppose we do help her, well, what then? Where does that leave us?

Alone, he thought bitterly, broke, nowhere to go. No better off. Haute Montagne would never welcome back Travis or Nancy. Too many rules had been broken, too many borders transgressed. He shivered in his inadequate clothing and wondered if Nancy knew the kind of future she had devised for herself.

Maybe that was what was keeping him here, this remnant of what he had felt for her, this fear… but was it strong enough to draw him back inside that shack?

He thought of Anna: her moth-wing skin. Her eyes coldly blue in the darkness. His love. His fear.

He might have turned away then, might have been driven back by the terrible intensity of the vision, when he saw, far off, a figure advancing from the stand of elder trees down by the switching yards. The gait was familiar but the memory eluded him: Who could be coming here? Then the name fell into place—Greg Morrow—and with the name a tremor of fear.

Travis emitted a sort of moan and stood up, running forward without thinking about it. He intercepted Greg halfway to the switchman’s shack.

Greg looked at him warily but with an obvious contempt. Confronting him, Travis felt suddenly helpless, foolish: what could he say? “You don’t have any business here,” he managed.

It was inadequate, but Greg Morrow must not be allowed near the switchman’s shack. Obviously he had suspicions: that was bad enough; but if he knew the truth—

But Greg was smiling. “That where she is?” — nodding toward the shack. “That whore Anna Blaise? Nancy, too, maybe?” The smile became a smirk. “You fuckin’ ’em both, farmboy, is that it? You know, you smell like shit. You look like shit, you smell like shit. But, hey, maybe they like that, huh? I bet it drives ’em nuts—that stink—”

Travis balled his fists. But before he could move Greg had put his hand into his coat pocket and pulled out a knife. It was a stupid knife, Travis thought, wood-handled, with a long serrated blade; it looked like a cheap steak knife. But he guessed it could cut. Greg waved it gleefully at him, and Travis felt a wave of fear wash over him. Fear and—something else.

“Not this time,” Greg said calmly. “I won’t be screwed over this time. Stand still! I’m just gonna go over and knock on the door. No problem. Just want to see who’s home.”

He stepped forward, and Travis—hardly aware of himself—stepped in front of him. Greg stood still. The knife was motionless in his hand. Travis looked at the knife and then at Greg. Greg’s eyes twinkled, there was a hint of glee there, and his smile was the rictus of a man strapped into a roller coaster, coming to the top of the first big hump and enjoying it somehow, somehow thriving on it. Travis realized then that Greg would use the knife, would use it gladly; that if Travis were hurt, if he died, it wouldn’t matter,- Travis was a hobo now; found dead, he would be quietly buried.

“Do it,” he said aloud, and a part of him wondered where the words came from. His voice was guttural, very nearly a growl. “Do it, Greg. I’ll take the knife away from you. I vow I will. And I’ll cut your balls off with it.”

Travis waited. The knife was only inches from his belly. But he looked at Greg and saw that some of the giddy hysteria had faded from his eyes. The knife wavered; an uncertainty had crept into the equation.

Then, swiftly, Greg smiled again.

He let the knife drop. “Well, I guess I know what’s in there already. I guess you just told me.” He took a step backward. “Have fun while you can, farmboy.”

Travis watched him walk almost lazily back toward the trees, listened for the sound of the car cranking up. His own heart was beating wildly; he felt dizzy.

He thought of Nancy in the shack, of what she had so narrowly avoided. Of what she could not much longer avoid, now that Greg Morrow had come back here. Christ God, he thought, shivering, she’s consorting with demons—they’ll crucify her—

He turned back and there was the sound of her scream.

He pulled her away from Anna, and instantly Nancy stopped trembling. She looked up at Travis with a mute, enormous gratitude. “You came. …”

“Nance, what is it? What’s wrong?”

The gun, she thought. The fear, the agony… She touched her ribs, her belly, wanting the reassurance that those wounds she had felt were not really her wounds. “I can’t explain,” she said faintly. “I don’t understand it myself—”

But Anna had stopped shaking, and she sat up now, hollow-eyed, luminous with faint blue fire. Nancy felt Travis recoil; but she gripped his hand and held it tightly, needing him.

Anna blinked. Her grief had filled the room,- it was palpable, physically present, a smell like roses … a cloud … an electricity in the skin…

She looked at Nancy. “You felt it?”

“Yes! God, yes!” She pressed against Travis. “That was him, wasn’t it? That was Bone. He’s close—”

Anna said faintly, “They’re killing him.”