The road crossed a narrow stream on a log bridge and then went on, winding through the trees, turning and turning back, up and down hills, past thick brushy places and open stands of pines. Laura and Helen were waiting for him in a police office in Bailey, wherever that was. Worrying about him, deserted by him. The thought drove him wild, how to get a message to them. I’m all right, I’m coming, I’m in the woods, you’d better get some sleep because it will take a while. Eventually they’ll send someone to look for him, but it will be hours before they realize the need, and no one will think of looking down a hidden lane like this.
They will never come for me, he said. I’m coming I’m coming. If he sat down to wait he would never get out. As if his life itself depended on this walk through the woods.
He slogged on, steady as he could. Steady was not easy because the track of the road was rough and hidden in the night, he stumbled on rocks, landed his foot in pits and irregularities, sometimes the trees closed in so that the road almost disappeared. He remembered nothing from the drive in. He came to a maze, strayed off, knew the straying from the spring of matted brush under his feet, found and kept the road only by the feel of his feet as he rebounded cautiously from one side to the other, hands out to protect his eyes. It would be easier to sleep too and wait for daylight. But he had so far just to get out of the woods, and then so far again, while Laura and Helen waited.
Insulted and grotesquely humiliated. Rage concentrated in his fists, steadied his pace, defied the blindness of his feet, his toes and heels. He catalogued the idiocies of hoods and punks, the kind who would play chicken with real cars on a highway and kidnap a college professor and dump him in the woods. Who think that sort of thing is funny. Manly. Tough.
Tony Hastings was insulted but refused to be humiliated. My name is Tony Hastings, he said. I teach mathematics at the university. Last week I gave three students F for the course. I gave great pleasure to fifteen others with the grade of A. I have a Ph.D. The law will have something to say to Ray and Lou and Turk. God knows I am a peaceful person, I dislike conflict, but if the law doesn’t. Guys who play pirate on the road may find out from me what it is like.
Outrage stiffened him against the danger of crying. From childhood, where the big boys snatched his hat and pushed him into the brook and ran away while he clambered out. They shall find out what it’s like.
Distance weights his feet, step by step stumbling to unravel the miles of driving rolled up between him and his destination. Time locks him in a cell and borrows from itself hours hidden from the world. If he permits the morning to come before he gets out, if he lies down and closes his eyes.
What if they decide they can’t wait any longer? What if they think he has run away? He must get the message to them before they leave.
Steady, man. Speak to him, calm him down. There’s nothing you can do but what you are doing. They will wait. Hope them some blessed sleep while you slog your way back.
Back where? That’s the question what police station? which he said you have not been thinking very clearly about. Knowing full well they weren’t waiting for him in any police station. Knowing all along but his mind deflected to other things. Now the reasons come. They won’t take Laura and Helen to the police station for the same reason they left you in the woods. They left you in the woods because they were not taking Laura and Helen to the police station. What Tony Hastings knew all along but only now understood, injecting mercury into his veins shooting everything cold, turning rage to terror. For if they were not taking Laura and Helen to the police station, where were they taking them to?
Steady, man, he said. Nothing to do but what you’re doing.
A few moments later he saw rays of white light through the woods ahead, rising and vanishing like someone swinging a flashlight. Then he heard a car, whining around the bumps and turns of the road. Yes, the car, they were coming back. The stupid long joke was over, they were coming back—as he had known they would, if he had only had the patience—and all his rage and terror dissolved into relief. Thank God! he said.
The white flood approaching, making grotesque shadows of sticks and pikes up into the branches, contracted suddenly into a fierce white eye visible for a second before hidden again, a second which lit up all the woods around him, trunks, bushes, boulders, and Tony Hastings himself like lightning, and in the same instant illuminated a warning in his mind: Hide!
He ran to the tree which the lightning had shown, hurrying before the headlights could reappear, then dashed across a space to the boulder beyond, while the lightflood bounced behind an intervening outcrop. Then for a moment all the woods were lit again but only for a moment, for suddenly it was pitch dark and he heard the car stop, lights off. They saw me, he said.
He stood behind the boulder, fright beating inside him. Saw me in that first flash of the headlight, and now they are waiting for me to show myself. I was right to be afraid.
“Hey mister!” The voice was close, resonant in the trees. “Your wife wants you.”
He held still. Wondered, could that be true? It ought to be, for if she wasn’t there, where was she?
“Mister? Your wife wants you.”
The voice had the music of a trap in it.
“Mister?”
“Ah shit!”
The lights snapped on, the forest floor was illuminated like a movie stage, and he was concealed behind the boulder in its shadow. The car started, and after a moment went on up the lane in the direction from which he had just come.
It looked like his own car. He watched its silhouette before the wash of light cast upon the woods beyond. He peered, strained his eyes, are they there? He saw the two men’s heads, knobs against the light, the two, just two, he was sure it was just two.
Yet he might have been wrong, it was hard to tell how much life was in that car, peering against the light while trying not to be seen. He stepped out to the lane, listening to the diminishing sound while the silence and clarity of the darkness gradually returned. What’s the matter with you? he said. Why didn’t you go to meet them?
He cursed himself for cowardice, then listened to the silence. Paralyzed, wondering, now which way?
SIX
The brutal telephone invades her reading, violating Susan in the woods. It’s Arnold checking in from his New York hotel, making her heart pound. Says he loves her, as if he thinks it necessary. Two minutes of awkward conversation with nervous pauses, strangers married twenty-five years. His interview is tomorrow. Write this down: The Cedar Hall Institute for Cardiac Research and Practice in Washington. Known as Chickwash. A directorship. When she hangs up, she’s as shaky as a fight, though there’s no fight she knows of. Should be relieved, right?
Meanwhile, Tony Hastings is alone on the grassy road in the woods, which a mere telephone call has caused her to forget. She sinks into the couch, tries to reenter Edward’s woods, but she’s still trembling from Arnold’s call. She reads a paragraph and takes in nothing. She tries again.
[Nocturnal Animals 5 (continued)]
Think, he said. You’re not thinking. Which way? Because if that was his car they were driving. And if Laura and Helen were last seen going off in it. And if Laura and Helen were in it now. Mister, your wife wants you.