She saw his mouth begin to work, to test the shape of the words he wanted to say: “Thank you.”
“You are welcome.” So perhaps it was all true about lions and thorns. Now that his eyes were a little more alive, she saw that it was a good face, had once been a good face when the mind behind it had been alive.
“Who... comes... here?”
She looked then at the kitchen clock and saw that it was after one. The school bus would drop the children off at five of three. And they’d come racing in, hungry and hooting. And at any disturbance like that he would kill.
With small cold fingers tight around her heart she despised herself. A great game of thorns and lions!
Suddenly the extension phone in the kitchen started to ring. He was up and in the middle of the room, club in hand, in one explosion of effort.
She started to move toward the phone.
“No!” he said.
“Maybe it is my husband. Do you understand? If he doesn’t get an answer, he’ll come home right away.” She put her hand on the wall phone. “I won’t tell anybody about you.”
When she saw the hesitancy, she picked up the phone and said hello. He moved close behind her. He circled the back of her neck with thumb and fingers and leaned close to the phone, his head beside hers. His touch made her shudder.
“What took you so long to answer, honey?” Paul asked.
“I was out in the yard, sanding the table.”
“Oh. I heard the news about the man hunt. Have you heard about it?”
“I’ve heard helicopters and sirens, but I didn’t turn on the news.”
“That’s just like you, baby. I want you to stay in the house and keep the doors shut. And locked. You hear? Don’t even bother to get the table in. They think they’ve got him cornered down by Hingham Creek, and they’re moving in on him, but you never can tell.”
“Who is it they’re after?” she asked and felt a sudden increase in the pressure of the hand on her neck.
“Oh, it’s some madman from the state farm. They thought he was harmless, but he wasn’t. He killed three of them — two patients and an attendant. The police got one shot at him early this morning, but they lost him in the woods. Keep the doors locked, honey, and keep the kids in the house when they get home. ’By.” He hung up.
Susan hung up and stood there, unmoving, the powerful hand on the back of her neck. After a few moments it was removed.
She stood near the table. “What will you do if they come here?”
The big brown hand closed on the club, and he said, “Hit!”
You must think, she told herself. This is an almost mindless thing. You can’t run from him, even when the school bus stops. You can’t save everything. So it comes to a choice. At any cost to you. Susan, you must warn them. Before the school bus comes.
She said, “I know where you can hide.”
There was no comprehension in his heavy stare.
“Come with me. I can hide you where they won’t find you.” She backed toward the doorway. “Come with me.”
He followed her. She felt him, heavy on the stairs behind her. She touched her cigarettes and matches in the pocket of the sun suit. She walked by her bedroom and the children’s rooms to the narrow stairway to the attic. He followed her up the second flight of stairs.
The carton was where she expected it to be, with the cans of paint, the bottle of turpentine. She walked close to the box, to the dormer window, and forced a smile and said, “It’s hot up here. I will open a window.” She waited and saw no protest and turned and opened the small window, propping up the bottom sash with the stick on the sill. There was no screen.
It was her plan to snatch the bottle of turpentine and smash it on the floor between them and drop a match into it and then climb quickly through the small window. The flames would keep him from following her. She would cross the roof and drop to the sun-porch roof and from there to the ground. She would be running down the road to the Carter house before he could run through the house and out to stop her. With the rubber soles on her sandals she should have enough traction on the steep roof.
“Dear house!” she thought. Soon the bus would be leaving the school. Yes, in this cause she could burn this dear place.
“You can sleep there,” she said and pointed into a far corner and stood for endless seconds before his big head turned slowly.
She snatched the bottle and smashed it on the floor, and the fumes were pungent. She had the matches out, and she ripped one out and tried to strike it, and it would not light. And she tried again and failed and knew there would be no third chance. She turned and thrust herself recklessly through the small opening out onto the hot sunlit slant of the shingled roof, scraping her thigh against the window frame — slid in panic toward the steep drop, trying to stop herself with hands and heels.
She saw a standpipe to her right and caught it in her hand; then she turned onto her knees and, holding the standpipe, looked back at the window in time to see him kick both sashes out of the frame. They slid and clattered down the roof and fell below.
The man and woman looked at each other. Gone was the chance to tame the lion. Their eyes were 10 feet apart.
He ducked out of sight, and a moment later a heavy can of paint struck the standpipe inches from her face. The force of the impact stung her hands. The can burst, and a great splash of orange paint spread across the roof.
“Paul used that to paint the boat trailer,” she thought. And she ducked as the next can whistled by her head, scrambled her way diagonally across the roof, then upward till she reached the peak, where the window was below, and he could not see her. She held tightly to the television aerial.
She saw a car coming, a woman driving. She waved frantically. She shouted, “Help me!” The woman, a stranger, saw her and waved back in a neighborly way and drove on down the empty road.
He came slowly and carefully out the window. He looked up at her. But the heavy shoes slipped on the shingles. He climbed back through the window.
“Now,” she thought, “he’ll take off his shoes and come after me. And maybe autumn has been the sad time for me always because, by some strange prevision, I knew that it would end in autumn. And it ends without dignity, ludicrously, on a roof.”
He began to back out the window again, feet bare and grimy. And she heard the faint high fluttering and looked up and saw the helicopter; and the tears ran down her face. She had the feeling she would wave in desperation, and they would wave back, and one of them would say to the other, “See the woman on the roof fixing her television aerial, Joe?”
So, holding with one hand, she sprawled on the roof and hoped she looked hurt or dead. The helicopter made one swing around the house and came back and hovered over her, 15 feet above her, and she was made breathless by the wind of its big protective pinions. She pulled herself up to the ridge and looked down the opposite side of the roof. He was gone.
As she wondered about that, the helicopter suddenly veered and tilted away and swooped like a great slow hawk. She saw him then, running barefoot across the back yard, past the sanded table, and up through the orchard while the helicopter kept behind and above him without effort. By the time it had reached the pines beyond the orchard, the sound of it had faded enough for her to hear the sirens, louder each moment.
She inched her way down the roof and climbed back in through the window. In the back of her mind was the image of him — running, running, running, the big pulsating bird above him, as inescapable as destiny.