He decides to run.
He has always been good at running.
He runs parallel to the front of the drugstore, and then cuts sharply around the edge of the building and into the woods behind it. If the trooper has seen him going into the woods, Colley will still be better off in here than running on the highway, in the open. He is wearing Sam Hollip’s blue pants and white short-sleeved shirt, this is the second time in twelve hours he’s had on clothes belonging to another man. He wishes the pants and the shirt were green, be better camouflage if the trooper opens fire again. But he does not hear any thrashing in the woods behind him; is it possible the trooper didn’t see him coming in here? He tries to remember the kind of lead he had on the trooper, was it long enough so that by the time the trooper came out the front door, Colley would already have been around the side of the building? But wouldn’t the trooper have seen him through the plate-glass windows, running toward the right? And wouldn’t he have guessed that Colley’d be heading for the woods instead of the highway?
The terrain slopes sharply upward, he is doing more climbing than he is running, but he still doesn’t hear anything behind him — is it possible? Is it possible that dumb trooper doesn’t know he’s in here? He begins to suspect a trap. Maybe the trooper knows a shortcut, maybe he’s circling around from another direction, he’ll spring out of the woods the way Sam Hollip’s monster dog did. But the only sound in the woods is the sound of Colley’s own breathing, and the crackle of twigs underfoot as he labors up the incline, and the hum of insects and the occasional voice of a bird. Nothing else. He is getting very good at hearing things in the woods, despite the fact that he is only a city boy. Maybe they will do an article on him once this is all over. Put his picture on the cover of a magazine. He does not have much hair on his chest, however.
He has reached the crest of the hill now. The ground is level here, the rock outcropping covered with soil and tufted with weeds. On the other side the ground rolls gently away into a grassy valley. There are wild flowers in the valley, blue and yellow and white and lavender. The sun is shining brightly, and there is a single cloud in the sky; it hangs motionless, a puff of white.
He starts slowly down the gentle slope.
He does not know how long he has been walking. He has forgotten to wind his watch, and it has stopped at four o’clock, and he does not know what time it is now. Ahead of him, beyond a fringe of trees, he hears voices and laughter.
He has come through the valley and into a woods on the other side of it. He has rested more than once in dappled clearings, and he has stopped to drink water from a trickle of a stream deep in the woods. He has crossed a pasture of waist-high grass, butterflies circling, grasshoppers leaping ahead of him, and now he comes through yet another glade, and cautiously approaches the voices and the laughter. He crouches. He peers through the leaves.
There are men and women in bathing suits on a lawn as emerald-bright as the valley had been. The pool beyond sparkles with late-afternoon sunshine. A black man in a white jacket and black trousers is standing behind a table covered with a white cloth. There are whiskey bottles and glasses on the table, a dish with lemon peels and lime wedges, another dish with olives. The black man is mixing a drink for a tall blond suntanned woman wearing a white string bikini. A fat man wearing red trunks and black-rimmed glasses is telling a joke. When he finishes the joke, the circle of men and women around him burst out laughing.
Colley would love a drink. He would love nothing better than to stroll out of the woods and up to the bar, ask the nigger for a gin and tonic. A gin and tonic would hit the spot now. The fat man is obviously the host. He leaves the group of people he’s just told the joke to, and wanders over to another group, probably to tell the same joke. If he was any kind of host, he’d ask Colley to come out of the woods and have a gin and tonic. There are great-looking women here, none of them spring chickens, but all of them tall and suntanned and wearing hardly any clothes.
There is the smell of money hanging over this place. The black man has set up his bar on a flagstone terrace covered with a striped awning, red and yellow. Behind the terrace, there are mullioned doors leading to a room in shadow beyond. The house is very big, ivy-covered stone rising to turrets and gabled windows, a slate roof, copper gutters, a huge chimney with three green hooded cones sticking out of it. The women are sleek and tan and swift as race horses, and the men ignore them the way only rich men would, talking instead about their investments in oil or soybeans, talking about their clubs in New York, talking about the great squash game they had yesterday, after which they came off the court and drank some beer advertised on television, talking about the business trips they will take to Europe in the fall, and the French girls they are going to fuck when they get to Paris.
Colley envies them and hates them.
He wants a gin and tonic.
He wants the tall sleek blonde in the white string bikini.
He circles around through the trees, toward the diving-board end of the pool, working his way toward the big stone house. It has occurred to him that all these fat rich bastards out here are in swimming trunks. They are out here talking among themselves, ignoring their sleek tanned women, and they are in swimming trunks — which means their clothes are somewhere in the house. Or maybe in a separate pool house. Colley can’t see a pool house. He knows what a pool house looks like because he has seen movies in which people come out of a cabana is what you call them, these pool houses, and then jump in the water or lie in the sun. He has never swum in a private pool. He would like to swim in this pool with the tall blonde in the white string bikini. The only pools he has ever swum in are the Boys’ Club pool on 110th Street when he was living in Harlem, and the Jefferson Pool on First Avenue, also when he was in Harlem. And then after they’d moved to the Bronx he swam at Tibbetts Brook in Yonkers, and also at Willsons Woods, and once his brother Al took him to Playland and they swam in the pool there. He would give his right arm to swim in this pool with the blonde in the white string bikini. Rabies and all, he would give it. He would give his left arm for a gin and tonic. He would swim armless to the side of the pool and ask the nigger to hold the drink to his lips. The blonde would giggle at his marvelous stunt, an armless man swimming the length of the pool. He would be the first unarmed robber in history.
The trees completely surround the house, he is grateful to the landscaper. The back of the house is all stone, windows slightly higher than his head on the main floor, windows on the second floor some fifteen feet above that; high ceilings. He is looking for a door he can go in through. He keeps circling the house through the trees, and he finds a place where there’s a small courtyard, and on one wall in the angle where the walls join, there’s a door painted a pale blue. Brass knocker on it. Dutch door, top half open. Inside he can see a black woman puttering around.
He doesn’t know if the lady of the house is in the kitchen giving orders to the hired help, but he figures he’ll take a chance. He wants to get in that house and find himself some different threads. The trooper back there must have seen he was wearing blue pants and a white shirt. Even if the trooper didn’t see it, Marie sure as hell did. Very anxious to help the police officer, old Marie was. There he is, Officer, heading for the door at the back of the store. Thank you, Marie. You cunt. He comes out of the woods and walks nonchalantly across the lawn toward the kitchen door. Inside the kitchen, the black woman is humming. This is plantation time down South. She is probably cooking corn on the cob in a great big pot on the stove and she is humming old slave tunes. He walks right in the kitchen. The black woman is alone in there.