They stood there, the wind gusting at their clothes, and on this wind came the sound of the birds first, then the birds themselves—a pair of loons, directly overhead, their bellies flashing white against the blue, their calls like a wild hysteria for home, for all the feeding and nesting and mating of the lakes to the north.
“I know your mind is made up,” Gordon said when the birds, and their cries, had passed on, “but that’s an awful long drive to do alone.”
“I’ll be all right, Mr. Burke.”
“I don’t want you driving through that town down there again. I don’t want you going anywhere near it.”
“I won’t.”
“I’m serious here.”
“I know. I promise.”
They were silent again. Her heart was beating. He seemed ready to go, and if they went now, if they got in the van and drove back to his house, she would never say it, so before he could move she said it.
“There’s something else I want to tell you. But I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”
He looked at her again. “You’re talking to a man who near about shot a sheriff—you know that, right?”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and smiled, and he turned once more to the gravestone.
“I can’t tell you how I know it,” she said. “I mean, I can tell you how I think I know, but that wouldn’t make it true.”
“I’m listening.”
“She had a good heart, Mr. Burke. Holly did. She had a strong heart, and that night—that night by the river, she fought. She fought really hard, Mr. Burke.”
She watched his profile. His jaw trembled, then hardened against the trembling. He stared into the wind and didn’t blink.
“How do you know?” he said. And turned to look at her.
“I’ve always known,” she said. “Since the night Caroline and I went into the river. I just never—” And the breath went out of her, or went back into her lungs, as if blown back into her by the wind.
“Never what?” he said.
She turned her face from the wind.
“I never saw him,” she said. “I never saw who she fought.”
Gordon watching her. Saying nothing. Then he said, “Why couldn’t you see?” and she turned to face him again.
“Because it was only girls, Mr. Burke. In the river. It’s always been only girls.”
They got out of the wind. They returned to the van and climbed in and shut the doors and then sat there listening. An eerie moaning, the van creaking like a boat. Gordon holding the keys in his hand, and his hand resting in his lap. Staring out at the bending trees, the old leaves shuddering on their stems. She said nothing, she waited, and at last he began.
“I have this dream, sometimes,” he said. “Or I guess it’s a nightmare, but anyway it’s always the same. I’m in a car, but I’m in the back seat, and in the front seat there’s a man driving and there’s a girl, a young woman, and I can’t see their faces but I know the young woman by her hair, and because I just know her—in the dream I know it’s her, and I can see that the man is talking to her. I can see his breath. And I can see him turn and say something to her, and I try to see his face but I can’t, it’s like there’s a blind spot there, like cloudy glass, or ice maybe, between the front seat and the back.”
He reached up with his open hand and swiped vaguely at the air in front of him, as if at a fogged glass. Audrey watching his hand, the fogged glass.
“And I can’t hear the man either, but I can see he’s getting worked up. He’s getting angry because she won’t answer him, she won’t talk to him, and I can see that she knows she has this one thing over him—she knows that the worst thing she can do to him, the thing that hurts him most, is to just ignore him. And I can feel how that feels to the man, I can feel how angry he is, and I tell her stop it, just talk to him, just talk to him until he calms down again. But she can’t hear me because of that glass, or ice, and my heart is pounding, it’s just pounding because I can feel how angry he’s getting, the man. And this goes on for a while. I can see the trees going past, and I can see the moon shining on the river, and I know what’s coming but I can’t stop it. It’s like I’m strapped down, or handcuffed, and before long the man reaches out to touch her and she just, kind of, jerks away from him, just flinches from his touch, and that’s it. That’s what does it.”
Audrey sitting so still, hardly breathing. The wind pushing at the van.
“And I sit there and I watch him grab her by the hair and there’s nothing I can do, just not a goddam thing, I have to sit there and watch this. And she fights. She fights him. He grabs at her and she swings at him and she even bites his hand, and I see him scream and jerk his hand away and that’s when the door opens and out she goes. Just right out the door, and he stops the car. He stops and sits there, watching as she gets up, as she walks ahead of him in the headlights. And I watch him watching her and I know exactly what he feels. It’s like I’m in the back seat but I’m in the front seat too. It’s like I’m inside this man’s heart and looking through his eyes and I know how he feels about her, I can feel what this man feels, for my own daughter. I know his rage, but I know that behind the rage is his… pride—that she would refuse him. That this little… that she would find him disgusting. And it’s just… it’s just…”
Audrey didn’t look at him, and knew he wouldn’t look at her. With his free hand he gripped the padded wheel and she heard the quiet crushing of it in his fist.
“And that’s when I know,” he said. “That’s when I know what comes next, and I tell myself wake up now, wake up, you son of a bitch, and I know it’s a dream but I can’t wake up, and I have to sit there, I have to sit there as the man takes his foot off the brake and the car begins to move again, toward her. And she doesn’t look back—she won’t give him the satisfaction—she knows he won’t do it, he won’t run her down, but I know it. I’ve known it all along because it’s always the same. And he’s getting closer to her and she won’t look back, but then at the last second she looks back and her face is lit up in the lights, and her eyes are full of the light and I know it, I know what he’ll do because I’m inside his heart and I can’t stop him, I can’t reason with him, I can’t change the rage in his heart. All I can do is sit there and watch as he runs her down.”
He let go of the wheel and rested his hand in his lap again, next to the hand that held the keys. Audrey was silent. Her heart pounding.
“Anyway what I meant to say was, all these years I could never see the man’s face. But now I do. Just before I wake up. The car has stopped again and he’s looking all around, like did anyone see…? And finally he looks back. He looks through that glass, that ice, and I see him. I see those eyes of his. I see those froggy eyes looking right at me.”
He was silent. Breathing. Staring ahead at the signs of wind, the dipping and lifting branches.
“Then what?” Audrey said.
“Then nothing,” Gordon said. “Then I wake up.”
66
THERE WAS JUST the one cruiser parked in front of the building, the sheriff’s, and she parked next to it and went up the steps toward the glass doors as she’d done so many times before, a little girl following her father; later, a teenager going to see him there, just to sit in the old wooden armchair and do her homework as he worked, just to be near him. The same woman behind the desk today as then, and the glass door had not swung shut behind her before this woman was up from the desk and coming for her—taking her in her arms and murmuring, “Oh, sweetie… Oh, honey…” Smell of powder, cigarettes, hairspray, before Gloria released her from the hug if not from her hold, strong little hands gripping Audrey’s forearms. Wet eyes searching Audrey’s and Audrey looking into these eyes behind the great lenses, both women silent until, suddenly, painted eyebrows rose and Gloria let go of Audrey’s right arm as if it she’d just noticed it was on fire—“Oh, you got your cast off! I’m sorry, did I hurt it?”