He looked out through the side window toward his car. It was pulled so deep in the woods that from the road it was hardly visible. He could see just beyond it the twisted oak that marked lovers’ hollow; he guessed every small town had such a hideaway, a tree-sheltered clearing scattered with empty bottles, Coke bottles, unmarked bootleg bottles. He hadn’t been out here since high school when he and Becky used to come out and park.
Jimson stood by the open driver’s door, the radio in his hand, calling for assistance. Why would he need assistance? Morgan couldn’t see enough of his own car to tell if it had been wrecked. At the thought of a wreck, fear iced along his back, brought him up alert. “Becky and Sammie,” he shouted at Jimson, “was there awreck, are they hurt? Where are Becky and Sammie?” He couldn’t remember them being in the car, couldn’t remember bringing them out here. Pressing his face into the wire barrier, he shouted crazily at Jimson. “Where’s Becky? Where’s my little girl? Were we in an accident? Are they hurt? Are they all right?”
“They’re all right,” Jimson said dryly. “As right as they can be.”
“What does that mean? Are they hurt? Tell me.”
Jimson was silent, staring in the mirror at him.
“Was there an accident?” Morgan repeated. “Is that why my car—why I’m out here? Where are they?” Becky’s face filled his vision, her brown eyes steady on him, Sammie’s elfin face so close to him he thought he had only to reach out and touch her soft cheek, reach out and hug her. “Where are they?” he repeated. “What’s this about?Was there an accident?”
“They’re at home,” Jimson said. “Youknow there was noaccident.” Why was he so enraged? Morgan started to press him, to ask what he meant, when another patrol car came barreling down the road and pulled up beside Jimson’s unit.
Sergeant Leonard stepped out. Morgan had known the brindle-haired police veteran since he was a kid, had an easy friendship with the older man, but now Leonard was as hard-faced and angry as Jimson. Morgan watched a young trainee get out the other side, a blond-haired young college type who, Morgan had heard, was good at cataloging evidence. Leonard stood looking into the backseat at Morgan.“Give me your car keys.”
Handcuffed, Morgan dug clumsily in his pocket for the keys and handed them over. Jimson slipped in behind the wheel of the black-and-white, as Leonard moved away toward Morgan’s car. Jimson started the engine, spun a U-turn on the narrow, empty road. Morgan hunched down in the moving car aching and sick, trying to figure out what was happening, whathad happened, trying to put the scattered pieces together—and worrying about Sammie and Becky, still terrified for them. And ashamed, because somehow he had failed them, because he had suddenly and inexplicably lost control of his life, had failed the two people in the world whowere his life.
“What was it, Jimson? What did I do, what happened?” He didn’t expect an answer, as closemouthed as Jimson had been. The woods swept by, the familiar farms, the long, stinking rows of metal chicken houses. As they neared town and turned onto Main Street, Jimson glanced in the mirror again at Morgan, his brown eyes flickering between rage and puzzlement; for an instant a touch of their friendship showed through, conflicted and uncertain.
And now, nearing the jail, all Morgan could think of was Sammie’s nightmare where he was locked behind bars, her terrified screaming that his friends were locking him in a cage. He wanted to fight his way out of the squad car and get home, find Sammie, tell her everything was all right, he wanted to hold her safe and tell her Daddy was all right.
But he wasn’t all right: he was coming more awake now, and as Jimson circled the block to park behind the police station, slowly Morgan began, with effort, to put events together. He had gotten into the car at noon, he was certain of that. Falonhad come into the shop, urging him real pushy as was Falon’s way. He remembered he’d been working on John Graham’s Chevy, replacing the fuel pump, remembered hearing Falon’s voice, looking up to see Falon there on the other side of the raised hood. He was sure, now, that he’d left the shop with Falon. They’d gone to look at Falon’s car? He thoughtFalon had wanted to tell him something, but he couldn’t remember what.
But that had to be yesterday, he’d apparently spent the afternoon and night in the car, and he could remember nothing of those hours. A whole afternoon and night wiped from his memory. He knew he hadn’t been drinking, no matter how he smelled or what he tasted. Had he been drugged with something worse than bootleg? And then left there in the woods alone, passed out cold, abandoned by Falon?
He remembered wiping up Falon’s spilled Coke, but didn’t remember much at all, after that. He looked into the rearview mirror at Jimson, wanting to ask if this was Friday, wanting to know if it had been just yesterday that he and Falon had gotten in his car, wanting to ask Jimson why he couldn’t remember anything after pulling away from the curb where he’d parked, driving just a few blocks, and then growing so dizzy and confused. He thought there was something about the Graystone Apartments. Was that where they were headed? He couldn’t remember arriving there.
“Jimson, I have to call Becky.” When he hadn’t been home all night, she’d be frantic. What had happened after Falon spilled the Coke? Those hours between yesterday and this morning had been taken from him as if they never existed, the whole night had been stolen from him. What had he done during those lost hours, those vanished and terrifying hours?
Jimson pulled around behind the impressive stone courthouse to the basement area below at the back, the entrance to the jail. Morgan watched his own car pull in behind them, to a fenced, locked area. He supposed the car would be held as evidence. Morgan knew, from walking through the lockup area, that the cells were small and dirty and they stank. Jimson parked the patrol car just at the back door of the jail, killed the engine, and got out. He opened the back door and motioned Morgan out, Morgan awkward with his hands cuffed behind him. Morgan stumbled up the steps ahead of the officer, herded along by the man who should be his friend, who now was as cold as if they’d never met. Jimson opened the big steel door, pushed him inside, forced him along the hall, on past the cells and up to the front, to the booking desk.
Morgan was booked into Rome City Jail at ten-fifteen that morning. Reeking of whiskey, he drew sharp, surprised looks from the staff and the other officers. At the front desk, Jimson fingerprinted him and filled out the forms, asking Morgan coldly for the answer to every printed question though he already knew the answers, he knew Morgan’s personal history as well as Morgan himself did. It was the charges that Jimson wrote down, that left him shocked.
Bank robbery?Murder? He looked at Jimson, feeling sick, looked at what Jimson had written. That couldn’t be right, not murder. He couldn’t have killed anyone. Nothing that could have happened to him, a hit on the head, some kind of drug, could make him kill someone. Nothing would allow him toforgetkilling someone.It was hard enough to forget what he had done during the war. Now, he wanted an explanation, he wanted to shout at Jimson and shake him until he found out what this was about.
But to make a fuss now might only make the situation worse. When Jimson finished filling in the report, he marched Morgan down the hall, shoved him in through a cell door so brutally that he fell sprawling across the concrete.
“Jimson?”
The officer turned, watched him as he struggled up.
He tried to talk to Jimson, tried to tell him he thought he’d been drugged, tried to reconstruct what little hecould remember: Falon showing up at the shop, his leaving with Falon, Falon spilling the Coke, Morgan turning to wipe it up.
Jimson said,“There was no Coke, no Coke bottles, no bottles of any kind except the empty moonshine bottle.”
“I didn’t have any moonshine. You know I don’t drink—no matter how I smell,” he said sheepishly. “Yousearched the car, and found nothing else? There were two Cokes, Falon bought them at the shop, from the machine. Ask Albert, he was there, working at the other lift.”