The Vanished

‘Was he unconscious?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Where did you leave him?’

‘In Hammock Grove.’

‘Where in Hammock Grove?’

‘By the bridge.’

‘What bridge?’

‘There’s this bridge goes across a little creek,’ Holly said. ‘When you first come in to the picnic area.’

‘All right. What time of day did all this happen?’

‘In the afternoon.’

‘What time?’

‘I dunno. It was still light out.’

‘And afterward you went home, back to the Emery farm?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do the Emerys know what you did?’

‘No, I never told nobody.’

‘And you never saw Sands again?’

‘No,’ Holly said. ‘Can I get up now? My head hurts.’

I kept my hands on the chair back. ‘Get up, then.’

It took him several seconds. He stood, finally, swaying a little, as if he were very dizzy. He said, ‘You hurt me plenty.’

I did not answer.

He moved then, away from me, into the bathroom. I watched him running water into the basin, as I had done, washing the blood from his face. He did not look into the mirror. He picked up the same towel I had used and buried his face in it, and then threw it down again and came out into the main room, blinking at me.

‘What you going to do?’ he said. ‘You going to take me to the police?’

I just stared at him.

‘I don’t like to be locked up. I can’t stand that.’

‘You can’t go around jumping people like you’ve been doing.’

‘I won’t do it no more.’

‘How do I know you won’t?’

‘Well, I won’t.’

‘All right,’ I said, ‘get out of here.’ I was near exhaustion now, and even if I wanted to take him in I did not think I was capable of it. I would pass out before we got halfway to the City Hall, with him docile or not. ‘Go on, Holly, go home.’

‘You won’t come bothering Mrs. Emery no more, will you?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I won’t come around there any more.’

‘I got nothing against you now,’ Holly said. ‘You beat me, and nobody ever done that before. You’re a tough guy.’

He staggered over to the door and got it open and looked at me with that pathetic, battered rubber mask; then he went out into the night, pulling the door shut behind him.

I moved directly to the light switch and put the room in darkness. I sat on the bed and took the rest of my clothes off and lay back with the blanket over me, trying to think; but it was no good, it was just no good.

I let sleep wash over me, wrapping the throbbing pain in it. Tomorrow I could think, tomorrow…

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I awoke to a consummate aching stiffness of every muscle in my body.

It was after nine and there was sunlight in the room, shining dustily in long, pale shafts on the bare redwood floor. I lay for a time with my eyes closed against the light, very still, listening to the hammering of surf within the confines of my skull. It began to ebb, finally, and I allowed the blankness upon which I had been concentrating to be filled by returning thoughts of last night.

It seemed like a particularly vivid dream instead of a fragment of reality, the way the events surrounding the knife episode a few months ago had later seemed. I tried to hate Holly again, but that was as useless as it had been last night; he lived in a kind of primitive, simplistic world where everything was black or white, without shading, and if the sanctity of the cave and its dwellers was threatened in any way, you fought as savagely as you knew how to protect those who protected you. There was no way to hate someone like that. Maybe, in some ways, his world was just a little better than ours; it was certainly less grim.

I went over the conversation I had had with Holly, examining again what he had told me. It was the truth, of that I was fairly certain. I did not think he would have known how to lie about something like that. He had then, as he’d said, picked up Roy Sands following the visit to the Emery farm on the twentieth of last month; then he had driven him out to this Hammock Grove and leaned on him and left him there unconscious. I was willing to accept that without disputation.

But then what?

Holly had sworn that Sands was alive when he’d left, and I believed that, too. Sands had come back here to the Redwood Lodge later to pick up his belongings, hadn’t he? And yet, if he was hurt, why hadn’t he gone to the police to press charges against Holly? Or to a doctor-who in turn would have notified the authorities because of the nature of those injuries? If he had done either, the cops would have had his name on record. So what had Sands done after coming out of it? Well-had he come out of it at all? Holly had just left him there, unconscious, and maybe he had been hurt worse than Holly thought, had had a concussion or some such, remained comatose, perhaps died of exposure…? No, if that were the case, the body would have been found by this time- unless Hammock Grove was the kind of summer picnic area no one ever went to in the winter, and it had been less than a month since December 20-oh Christ, if he had died out there, how could he have picked up his stuff and gone up to Eugene? I was thinking in pointless circles.

I swung my feet out of bed and got up gingerly and took a couple of experimental steps that seemed to work out all right. In the bathroom I tried the mirror again and it was not as bad as I expected; the swelling was gone from the one eye, and the left side of my face, under the red-orange streaks of the Mercurochrome, had begun to scab already. The cut on my cheekbone ached painfully, and I thought about taking the bandage off to apply some more antiseptic; but that did not seem like such a good idea, remembering that flap of skin, and I decided I would be wiser to leave it alone.

I knew I was going to have to see a doctor sometime today, to have the cut and the other abrasions looked at, and I did not relish the thought. Still, it had to be done and I accepted that. I did not see any point in making a report to the local cops; if I did that, I would have to give them Holly’s name-and no purpose would be served in having the poor bastard jailed. He was all right as long as no one bothered the Emerys, and who was going to bother them now?

I used a little more of the Mercurochrome on my upper lip and the side of my face, and on my scalp, and combed my hair, and ran the toothbrush around inside my mouth a couple of times; there was no sense in trying to shave or wash. I wondered what Cheryl would say when she saw me, and then I knew she would take it all right after the initial shock; she was not like Erika. I would have had to put up with a lecture from Erika, but there would be no lecture from Cheryl. The difference between the two of them was like night and day.

There was one of those instant-coffee dispensers in the room, and I made myself a cup and drank it, sitting on the desk chair. I had no desire to frighten hell out of some waitress in a local cafe coming in the way I looked, and I was not in any mood for breakfast anyway. The thing that had been nagging at me while I had eaten supper the previous evening was back and stronger than ever, nurtured by the revelation that Holly had jumped on Roy Sands the way he had on me. It was all starting to come together, I could sense that: the answer was here in Roxbury, and it was very close.

I finished my coffee and gathered up the bloodstained clothing. Then I soaked the towel both Holly and I had