Voices in the Dark Read online

  “I enjoy the conversation,” Dudley said.

  “But something’s not working here, Dudley. Perhaps you don’t trust me.”

  “Trust must be earned.”

  “I agree, absolutely.” Patience and a greater degree of wile, the reverend realized with some misgiving, would be necessary. “Is there anything you want?”

  Something seemed to surge inside Dudley’s head. His face gained force. “I could use something for irregularity.”

  Reverend Stottle brightened, for here he had answers. When he was a child, his mother had always fed him things she said were good for his bowels. Fresh fruit, she claimed, made you happy on the toilet. “The orange should help,” he said. “Tomorrow I’ll bring an apple.”

  “Promise?”

  “I do.” He rose from the chair, his posture relaxed and meditative. A wondrous feeling of usefulness pervaded him. “Would you like to pray?”

  “Next time,” Dudley said, “when you bring the apple.”

  He stepped to the cell door. When he rattled it, it flew open. The chief was waiting for him with folded arms near Meg O’Brien’s desk. Meg ripped a tissue from a floral box and blew her nose. “I’m afraid we have a lost soul in there,” he said, his eyes on both.

  The chief said, “Thanks for trying.”

  “It’s my job,” the reverend said, with a suspicion that the chief had been listening in. “I promised him I’d be back.”

  “That’s good,” the chief said, and Meg O’Brien looked the other way.

  After the reverend left, the chief loosened his arms and scratched the back of his head with his middle finger. Meg rose and stood taut in a dress that hung crooked. “I’m not going to say anything,” she said, but then she made a disapproving tsittsit with her tongue and teeth.

  “All right, Meg. Say it.”

  “I just don’t know what that was supposed to accomplish — bringing in a fool to talk to a loony bird.”

  “It was worth a try.”

  She looked at him gravely. “No, it wasn’t.”

  • • •

  In the hot Boston sunlight, Mary Williams and Soldier passed doorsteps with decorative iron rails. Someone had chalked a swastika in a handicap parking space. Soldier, whose politics were repugnant to her, smiled. They had left Beacon and were walking past Commonwealth Avenue toward Newbury. She had on a net jersey, a thin swishing skirt, and sandals. Soldier, wearing a tank top and khaki shorts, paraded an overcharge of muscles in his arms and legs. His tennis shoes lacked laces.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, turning her face from the traffic. She had woken with a headache, which aspirin had only half killed. On Newbury Street traffic was heavier. Vibrations engulfed her.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” she said.

  They took refuge under the canopy of a crowded sidewalk café and threaded their way to an unoccupied table, lucky to find one. Soldier ordered sweet rolls and grapefruit juice; Mary asked for coffee only. He said, “If you’re feeling better, then what’s the matter?”

  She watched a bearded man rattle a newspaper, a young couple touch hands. The man was reading the theater section, the couple each other. Everything seemed right with the world, but inside her were anxiety, division. When her coffee came, she said, “He’s never been away this long before.”

  Lowering his shaved head, Soldier tore into a roll. “You got me, what more do you want?”

  She heard a deep voice and imagined Heathcliff, but it was only a waiter, not theirs, repeating an order. “That nurse of yours …”

  Soldier laughed. “We have an open relationship.”

  “I see. She doesn’t mind.”

  “Wouldn’t matter if she did.”

  She watched the young couple kiss, their movements a slow melody from another time. “And where do I rate with the nurse?”

  “Higher.” He downed the grapefruit juice as if it were whiskey. “You got a beauty mark.”

  “It’s unlovely,” she said.

  “You’re wrong, but if you don’t like it, have it removed.”

  “Why should I? It’s me.”

  He was grinning, showing sturdy white teeth. “You’ve got another asset. Your grandmother’s bed.”

  “Don’t get used to it,” she said and hurled her gaze toward the sidewalk. Faces swarmed, traffic rushed. “When he comes back, you’re gone.”

  He laughed, and she strained to stay on top of her emotions while envying his arrogance and independence. He had no apparent worries, no baggage. He didn’t work. He lived on an army pension and off women, currently the nurse. “Who knows,” he said, “you might want me to stick around.”

  It was that cocksure immediacy that she tried to trap in sketches of him, with only varying success. His life was all in the present tense, no past. Sometimes he alluded to his military service, but he seldom talked about it. Once he mentioned a sister but gave her no face.

  “You support him, don’t you?” he said, gathering crumbs and eating them. “I know you do.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “What is he to you? I still don’t get the relationship.”

  “It’s not for you to understand or even think about,” she said, sweeping her hair back. The couple had quit kissing and were leaving. The woman had a rich, confident laugh, as if life could never be cruel to her. The young man’s face was alight. She was saddened to see them leave.

  Soldier said, “What if he doesn’t come back?”

  “Then I shall die.”

  He snorted. “I know bullshit when I hear it, and that’s bullshit.”

  “Then you shouldn’t ask questions that require lies.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Always,” she said, which was not true, but was true enough. She swallowed coffee, wishing it were her own herbal tea.

  Soldier said, “The guy’s got a secret life.”

  “We all do.”

  “But maybe he’s crazy.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe you both are.”

  “That would follow.” She put her coffee cup down. The bearded man, with the air of a connoisseur, was staring at them over his newspaper; then he withdrew his eyes as if he had seen enough.

  “You finished?” Soldier said and snapped his fingers at a waiter, not theirs, and asked for a check. When it came, Mary paid with a bill fresh from an automatic teller machine, the newness sticking to her fingers. Soldier reached the sidewalk before she did.

  “You go on,” she said. “I’m going the other way.”

  He contrived a smile. “What do you mean? Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to look for him.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “You’re crazy.”

  • • •

  They met at Paget’s Pond, five miles from the green. Kate Bodine drove up in a Mazda, the seat pushed back for leg room, and was out of it when Chief Morgan pulled up with a small smile of gratitude, for it was she who had phoned. Stepping out, he said, “Crazy summer. One whole dog day.”

  “No season is perfect, James. Always too much of one thing, not enough of another.”

  They moved away from their automobiles, skirted a weathered picnic bench and a No Swimming sign, and followed a path toward the pond. Birds gave voices to the pines. Canada geese were distant buglers. When they reached the water, she yanked her hands from her pockets.

  “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  “Give yourself time, it’ll come to you.” He was enchanted as ever by her eyes, the blue from a crayon stub. The sun spangled her hair. “I’ve looked for you at the library.”

  “I haven’t been there.”

  “Holly Pride mentioned you have an overdue book.”

  “Who in hell is Holly Pride?”

  “The librarian.”

  “My God, were we that obvious?”

  “Only to Holly, I’m sure. She’s a romantic.”r />
  Kate looked away. Morgan did too. The surface of the pond, toward the distant middle, was restless, swirling in places, as if from a dynamo of hidden fish. From the opposite shore came faint traces of voices, which startled her.

  “Girl Scouts,” Morgan explained. “The camp’s in the woods. Were you a Scout, Kate?”

  “A Bluebird. I flew up and never landed.”

  He stared at her with much wishful thinking and too much purpose. In his head was the ring of a hammer, which another time might have driven her back a step. Now she was distracted. “Kate, what’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He embraced her for the first time ever. He kissed her chastely on the cheek but held her too tightly, despite a resolve to make no uninvited moves.

  “I’m all right, James. Let me go.”

  Walking side by side, they stepped over bumps of earth, mosses, stunted weeds. Pungencies from the pond filled the air. A blueberry bush yielded a bird, and a chipmunk, visible one instant, vanished the next.

  “It’s Harley,” she said suddenly. “Something isn’t right with him.”

  “I would think so. He’s lost a son.”

  “It’s that and something more. He’s turned secretive and suspicious. When I come into a room, he jumps. His eyes try to cut holes in me, like he wants to hone in on exactly what I’m thinking.”

  “Maybe he knows about us.”

  “What’s there to know? We haven’t done anything.”

  “Only we know that.”

  She shook her head. “If it was that simple I could deal with it, even dismiss it, but it’s deeper. I’ve become his enemy, and I don’t know why.”

  “Could you be imagining it?”

  “No.”

  High in the pines came a creak and then a loud crack, eerie because they expected to hear a crash but none came, which raised in Morgan a memory of his wife and their shepherd, wintertime, the pond frozen. Belly rumblings from faults in the ice had unnerved the dog, and the dog fled. He said, “Are you afraid of him?”

  “Only because I don’t know him, not the way a wife should. Too much is missing in the marriage — a child, for one thing. He led me to believe he wanted one, but he doesn’t.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Bells don’t ring, if that’s what you mean.”

  “If you’re unhappy, leave him.”

  “It’s not that easy,” she said, without explaining. Her smile was ironic. “I should be talking about this to another woman. Instead I choose you.”

  “A police chief has many functions.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said when voices from across the pond grew louder, some distinct. She had the lead as they made their way back along the path. Over her shoulder she said, “It’s my problem, James. I don’t mean to make it yours.”

  He felt too old for her, but he wanted her anyway. He wanted to be drawn into the whirl and heat of a romantic act of madness with a woman he could love. A mosquito whined in his face, and he repulsed it. He wanted too damn much.

  The police radio was crackling in his car. He ignored it. She leaned against the fender and folded her arms. “You listen to a woman, James. Few men do. When we first met, something about you struck me as authentic and honest. I still feel that way. Why are you blushing?”

  “There’s deceit in all of us.”

  “But less in you, I think. I sense strength.”

  He took the compliment for what it was worth. Endurance, a kind of strength, was among his qualities, and women were his safety ropes. He did not mention that on evenings when he was alone, depression was a punctual visitor, arriving uninvited, staying as long as it liked, and leaving unnoticed, its absence only gradually sensed.

  He smiled to hide his thoughts, and she reached out and touched his arm. “You have a nice smile, James, the kind that can glue a woman to you.”

  “The women don’t seem to stay.”

  “You deserve better.”

  “I take what’s given.”

  She leaned toward him. Her kiss was light, but it was on the lips and lingered. Then she climbed into the Mazda, shut the door, and gazed out. “I tell you my problems, James, you never mention yours. Maybe you don’t have any.”

  “I’ve got a fellow locked up I don’t know what to do with. His crime is telling scary stories.”

  “If I were still working in TV, I’d interview him, though no guarantee it would run. James, thank you.”

  She twisted the ignition key. The motor murmured power, and Morgan’s ear, usually deaf to such matters, detected a degree of anxiety in the hum, something to be checked. He stepped back as she pulled onto the road, and then he watched the car climb a hill. The hill was fairly steep, a blind rise, and in the instant he envisioned disaster at the top. A sudden crash. A burst. Another woman taken from him.

  The Mazda simply and soundlessly vanished over the hump.

  • • •

  In one of her nicer summer dresses, her lips painted, May Hutchins entered the police station and gave Sergeant Avery her friendliest smile, though she didn’t think much of him, especially as a police officer. He was too dumpy for the uniform. His pants, too small or something, rode up on him, and his shirt was half untucked. She glanced at Meg O’Brien’s unoccupied desk and at the chief’s vacant office. “Where is everybody, Eugene?”

  Sergeant Avery slammed shut the drawer of a file cabinet in which he’d been pawing for something he’d squirreled away and now couldn’t find. He swigged root beer from a can and said, “The chief I don’t know where he is, and Meg’s gone home to do something with her cats.”

  “How many has she got?”

  “Three last I knew, one died.”

  “Hope she didn’t go into mourning. ’Course, she doesn’t show her feelings like the rest of us. What are you staring at, Eugene?”

  “You look different. Your hair, right? A different color, sort of orangy brown.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He took another swig and then tattooed the soda can with his thumbnail. “What are you doing here, May? Something I can do for you?”

  “I hear you got a prisoner. I want to see if he’s the poor bugger came begging at my door.”

  “He leave you a present too?” Sergeant Avery asked with a smirk, and May arched her back.

  “Just because Dorothea Farnham makes an accusation doesn’t mean it’s true. He came to my house, he was a perfect gentleman. Christian charity is what he got from me. You going to let me see him, or don’t you have the authority?”

  Sergeant Avery hesitated, then shrugged. “Sure, I got the authority. You want to see him, what do I care?”

  She followed him through a doorway and down a short passage, a broom closet on one side and a lavatory on the other. At the end was the lockup. Peering through bars, she saw the prisoner napping comfortably on an army cot, a pillow under his head, a small table fan providing a breeze. “He looks different, but that’s him,” she whispered. “Sleeping like a baby.”

  “That’s what he does best.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Dudley.”

  “It suits him,” she said, tilting her head for a better look. “I let him eat a bowl of cereal in my gazebo. He had perfect manners and a wonderful way of speaking. He said the best time of day is when the dew’s still on the grass.”

  “All I know,” Sergeant Avery said, still clutching the soda can, “is he’s locked up for uncouth behavior. That’s how the chief put it.”

  “Chief should talk. His is X-rated if half what I hear is true.” She shifted her gaze to magazines on a shelf and found herself scowling. “Some of that reading material doesn’t look proper.”

  “Must be Floyd’s.”

  “I’ve a mind to tell his mother.”

  The prisoner was awake. A single blue eye stared at her from the comfort of the pillow. Over her shoulder, a blast in her ear, Sergeant Avery belled, “How�
��s your stomach, Dudley? Any better?” In a lower voice the sergeant confided, “He’s constipated. Poetic justice, the chief says.”

  Dudley sat up with a start, as if coming out of a dark place, and pulled at his ill-fitting shirt, which may have been disarranged in a dream. May watched him swipe the forelock from his face, which for a full moment suggested an old clock without the will to tick. Smiling through the bars, she said, “Do you remember me?”

  A strange expression diminished his features, as if he were debating his own existence. Then he brightened. “Did you bring me anything?”

  “Sorry,” she said, wishing she had. His eyes were coins spending themselves on her. “Are you in much discomfort?” she asked with real concern.

  “I want one of those,” he said, pointing at Sergeant Avery’s root beer.

  “Go get him one, Eugene.”

  “Hell, no,” Sergeant Avery said, “they’re Meg’s. One I’m drinking I gotta pay for.”

  “For God’s sake, I’ll spring for it.”

  He shuffled off with a grumble, and she peered through the bars. What was she doing here? What did she want? As we grow older, she asked herself, do we all drift into some kind of nonsense? Dudley was looking at her curiously, his signet ring catching her attention, and once more she wondered whether he had stolen it.

  “Are you a good person?” he asked.

  She was as good as the next but nobody special. In church she sang without a voice and at home played the piano without talent. She had never learned to knit, which prevented her from emulating Dorothea Farnham, who brought her needles to town meeting and gave the impression that her life was devoted to doing two things at once.

  “Are you a happy parent?” Dudley asked.

  What a queer question! “My children are grown,” she said. “I don’t see much of them.” She did not mention that her son, only twenty-six, was beginning to bald, which made her feel ancient, and that her daughter, living in California, had made a mess of two marriages.

  “Not everyone,” Dudley said easily, “should have children. Chronos devoured his. Agamemnon sacrificed his to make war. This isn’t anything I’m making up. It’s mythological fact.”

  The names sailed over her head, but his smile warmed her, as if he understood everything and judged not. Sergeant Avery returned and thrust upon her an unopened can of root beer, cold to the touch. She poked it through the bars. “For you, Dudley.”