A car came along. As it approached Helen went to the roadside and waved at it frantically. It increased its speed and went by.
Then Laura spoke to Tony. “Come on,” she said, “we can pick her up down there.” She got into their car. But when Tony went around to the driver’s side, he saw Helen coming back, and the three men standing between her and the car.
She had a stick in her hand.
Another car was approaching. She had come almost up to the three men’s car and when the lights came closer she ran into the highway waving both arms and the stick over her head. The car slowed down. It was a pickup truck, and it stopped just short of her. The driver leaned over to the right side and looked out. “What are you trying to be killed?” he said.
He was an old man in a baseball cap. They all went up to him except Laura, who was in the car. “These guys—” Helen said.
“It’s okay,” Ray said. “She’s a little shook up.”
“It’s not okay, ask my Daddy.”
“Eh?” the old man said.
“We need help,” Tony said.
“What say?”
“Flat tire,” Ray said. “We fixed it for them.” He was nodding and smiling, his teeth like a rodent. “Everything’s under control.”
“Eh?” the old man said. “She trying to get herself killed?”
Ray shouted at him. “It’s okay! Everything’s under control!”
Tony stepped forward. “Excuse me—” he said. He heard Helen crying: “Help us, please.” The old man looked at Ray, who was laughing and waving the tire iron.
“What say?” He cupped his ear.
“No problem,” Ray said in a loud voice.
“No no,” Tony tried to shout. Someone was dragging him back by the arm. The old man looked at the group of them. His face was bewildered and unhappy, but perhaps it was always that way. He looked at Ray’s tire iron, hesitating. “No problem then,” he said suddenly. His voice was testy, and he disappeared from the window, put the pickup truck in gear, and drove off.
Behind him, Tony heard Helen cry out, “For Christ sake, mister!”
“What’s the matter, baby?” Ray said. “You don’t want to mess with a deaf old man like him.”
There was a rush of motion, the men startled, Helen making a dash around them to the car, into the back seat, slamming the door. Another moment of silence, Ray holding Tony by the elbow, not hard, Laura and Helen waiting for him in the car.
“Okay,” Ray said at last. “We go in both cars.”
The relief at last of the nightmare ending, tired of their game, which had gone as far as it could, they must have realized nothing more was possible. He knew they would not go to the police, but he didn’t care, glad only to be free of them.
Except that Ray had him by the elbow. He moved toward the car and felt the grip tighten, hold him back.
“Not you,” Ray said.
“What?”
The real fear now, shock of the first nuclear warning in the war.
“We split up,” Ray said. “You go in my car.”
“No way.”
He saw the action at his car, the man with glasses running to the driver’s door, opening it just before Laura on the passenger side realizing too late what was happening could reach over to lock it, the man holding it open, bracing it where he stood with his foot in the car, while Ray was saying, “You ain’t got no choice.”
“I’m not going to leave my family.”
“I said, mister, you ain’t got no choice.”
So now the coercion was overt. With Ray’s two partners, one with his foot in the door of Tony’s car, looking at Ray waiting for some decision or order what to do. The man thought a while. He released Tony and said, “You go with Lou.”
When Ray went over to Tony’s car, Tony tried to follow, but the man with the beard touched him. “Better not,” he said. He had something in his hand, Tony could not tell what. Tony shook him off and went after Ray. He saw the man with his foot in the door reach inside to unlock the back, which Helen sitting there tried to prevent. He saw a struggle with Helen trying to bite the hand of the man with glasses, who got the door open and got in. He ran after Ray thinking I’ll hit him in the back, I’ll knock him down and get in the car, but something heavy sliced across his shins, he plunged forward and fell with hands and knees scraping the pavement, his chin hit, and he looked up and saw Ray getting into the driver’s seat.
With a violent roar the car started up, then a shriek of the tires as it pulled onto the highway and sped away. He saw the horrified faces of his wife and daughter looking at him as the car rushed by, and he heard the rushed diminuendo of the car’s speed as it went down the road, the little red lights shrinking and getting closer together until they were gone.
For a few moments then there was only the silence of the woods and some distant roar of a truck almost indistinguishable from silence, while Tony looked down the invisible road where all he loved had disappeared, trying to find some way to deny what the words in his mind said had happened.
The man with the beard, whose name was Lou, was looking down at him. He held the tire iron in his hand. “Come on,” he said. “You’d better get in the car.”
FOUR
Susan is shocked. They have kidnapped Tony’s family while she, helpless, anticipated everything. She resists, she should have prevented it. They should have got into the car when Helen ran up the road, driven off before the men could react, picked her up as they went by. They knocked him down, tripped him up. They blocked him just as Edward is blocking her. She watches Tony’s car disappear down the road with its precious load and shares his shame and dread.
She wakes up in the warm small living room, the game in the next room, a long way from that roadside wilderness. She feels a gap, someone missing. Not Arnold, she knows where he is. It’s Rosie, my child Rosie, where is she? The cold night shoots an icicle of panic through her heart, why isn’t she here? But Susan Morrow knows where Rosie is, she’s spending the night with Carol. So that’s not it. As for Arnold in his bamboo underground lounge. Relaxing (not with Marilyn Linwood) with Dr. Oldfriend and Dr. Famous and Dr. Newcomer and Dr. Medstud after a day of papers and panel discussions.
She would like to know, do such terrible things actually happen? She hears Edward’s answer: you read it in the papers every day. Her dear ex-husband has plans for us. She dreads Edward’s plans, but she’s not afraid.
Nocturnal Animals 4
“You drive,” the man named Lou said.
“Me?”
“Yeah you.”
The peculiarity of a stranger’s car, the wounded metal of the screeching door, the driver’s seat with torn seat back, the floor pedals too close. The man handed him the key. Tony Hastings was trembling, frantic with haste, he groped for the ignition. “To your right,” the man said. The car didn’t want to start, and when Tony finally put it in gear it was long since he had driven with a manual shift, and the car stalled.
There was Lou beside him, the man with the black beard, not saying anything. When Tony finally got going he drove as fast as he could, with plenty of speed in this car, rattling and squealing in the wind, but he knew with despair that mere speed would not catch the tail lights of the other car with their big start.