“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. That’s probably why he stopped in.”
Their talk turned to other things as Harriet—seized by fear—lay with her face pressed in the pillow, very still. Never had it occurred to her that she might be wrong in her suspicions about Danny Ratliff—simply wrong. What if he hadn’t killed Robin at all?
She had not bargained for the black horror that fell over her at this thought, as if of a trap clicking shut behind her, and immediately she tried to push the thought from her mind. Danny Ratliff was guilty, she knew it, knew it for a fact; it was the only explanation that made any sense. She knew what he’d done, even if nobody else did.
But all the same, doubt had come down on her suddenly and with great force, and with it the fear that she’d stumbled blindly into something terrible. She tried to calm herself down. Danny Ratliff had killed Robin; she knew it was true, it had to be. And yet when she tried to remind herself exactly how she knew it was true, the reasons were no longer so clear in her mind as they had been and now, when she tried to recall them, she couldn’t.
She bit the inside of her cheek. Why had she been so sure it was him? At one time, she was very sure; the idea had felt right, and that was the important thing. But—like the foul taste in her mouth—a queasy fear now lingered close, and would not leave her. Why had she been so sure? Yes, Ida had told her a lot of things—but all of a sudden those accounts (the quarrels, the stolen bicycle) no longer seemed quite so convincing. Didn’t Ida hate Hely, for absolutely no reason? And when Hely came over to play, didn’t Ida often get outraged on Harriet’s behalf without bothering to find out whose fault the quarrel was?
Maybe she was right. Maybe he had done it. But now, how would she ever know for sure? With a sickening feeling, she remembered the hand clawing up from the green water.
Why didn’t I ask? she thought. He was right there. But no, she was too frightened, all she’d wanted was to get away.
“Oh, look!” said Harriet’s mother suddenly, standing up. “She’s awake!”
Harriet froze. She’d been so caught up in her thoughts, she’d forgotten to keep her eyes shut.
“Look who’s here, Harriet!”
Her father rose, advanced to the bed. Even in the shadowy room, Harriet could tell that he had put on a bit of weight since she had last seen him.
“Haven’t seen old Daddy in a while, have you?” he said. When he was in a jocular mood, he liked to refer to himself as “old Daddy.” “How’s my girl?”
Harriet suffered herself to be kissed on the forehead and cuffed on the cheek—briskly, with a cupped hand. This was her father’s customary endearment, but Harriet disliked it intensely, especially from the hand that sometimes slapped her in anger.
“How you doing?” he was saying. He’d been smoking cigars; she could smell it on him. “You’ve fooled these doctors but good, girl!” He said it as if she’d pulled off some great academic or sports triumph.
Harriet’s mother was hovering anxiously. “She may not feel like talking, Dix.”
Her father said, without turning around: “Well, she doesn’t have to talk if she doesn’t feel like it.”
Looking up into her father’s stout red face, his quick, observant eyes, Harriet had an intense urge to ask him about Danny Ratliff. But she was afraid.
“What?” her father said.
“I didn’t say anything.” Harriet’s voice surprised her, it was so scratchy and feeble.
“No, but you were about to.” Her father regarded her cordially. “What is it?”
“Leave her alone, Dix,” said her mother in a low murmur.
Her father turned his head—quickly, without saying a word—in a manner that Harriet knew very well.
“But she’s tired!”
“I know she’s tired. I’m tired,” said Harriet’s father, in the cold and excessively polite voice. “I drove eight hours in the car to get here. Now I’m not supposed to speak to her?”
————
After they finally left—the visiting hours were over at nine—Harriet was much too afraid to go to sleep, and sat up in bed with her eyes on the door for fear that the preacher would come back. An un-announced visit from her father was in itself occasion for anxiety—especially given the new threat of moving up to Nashville—but now he was the least of her worries; who knew what the preacher might do, with Danny Ratliff dead?
Then she thought of the gun cabinet, and her heart sank. Her father didn’t check it every time he came home—usually only in hunting season—but it would be just her luck if he did check it. Maybe throwing the gun in the river had been a mistake. If Hely had hidden it in the yard, she could have put it back where it belonged, but it was too late for that now.
Never had she dreamed he’d be home so soon. Of course, she hadn’t actually shot anyone with the gun—for some reason she kept forgetting that—and if Hely was telling the truth, it was at the bottom of the river now. If her father checked the cabinet, and noticed it was missing, he couldn’t connect it to her, could he?
And then there was Hely. She’d told him almost nothing of the real story—and that was good—but she hoped he wouldn’t think too much about the fingerprints. Would he realize eventually that nothing prevented him from telling on her? By the time he understood that it was her word against his—by then, maybe enough time would have passed.
People didn’t pay attention. They didn’t care; they would forget. Soon whatever trail she had left would be quite cold. That was what had happened with Robin, hadn’t it? The trail had got cold. And the ugly thought dawned on Harriet that Robin’s killer—whoever he was—must have at some point sat thinking some of these very same thoughts.
But I didn’t kill anybody, she told herself, staring at the coverlet. He drowned. I couldn’t help it.
“What, hun?” said the nurse who had come in to check her IV bottle. “Need something?”
Harriet sat very still, with her knuckles in her mouth, staring at the white coverlet until the nurse had departed.
No: she hadn’t killed anybody. But it was her fault he was dead. And maybe he had never hurt Robin at all.
Thoughts like these made Harriet feel sick, and she tried—willfully—to think of something else. She had done what she had to; it was silly to start doubting herself and her methods at this stage. She thought of the pirate Israel Hands, floating in the blood-warm waters off the Hispaniola, and there was something nightmarish and gorgeous in those heroic shallows: horror, false skies, vast delirium. The ship was lost; she had tried to recapture it all on her own. She had almost been a hero. But now, she feared, she wasn’t a hero at all, but something else entirely.
At the end—at the very end, as the winds billowed and beat in the walls of the tent, as a single candle flame guttered in a lost continent—Captain Scott had written with numbed fingers in a small notebook of his failure. Yes, he’d struck out bravely for the impossible, reached the dead untraveled center of the world—but for nothing. All the daydreams had failed him. And she realized how sad he must have been out there on the ice fields, in the Antarctic night, with Evans and Titus Oates lost already, under immense snows, and Birdie and Dr. Wilson still and silent in the sleeping bags, drifting away, dreaming of green fields.
Bleakly, Harriet gazed out into the antiseptic gloom. A weight lay upon her, and a darkness. She’d learned things she never knew, things she had no idea of knowing, and yet in a strange way it was the hidden message of Captain Scott: that victory and collapse were sometimes the same thing.
————
Harriet woke late, after a troubled sleep, to a depressing breakfast tray: fruit gelatin, apple juice, and—mysteriously—a small dish of boiled white rice. All night long, she’d had bad dreams about her father standing oppressively around her bed, walking back and forth and scolding her about something she’d broken, something that belonged to him.