“I… don’t know.”
“What?”
“I don’t know!”
“My God, how can you not know? Even if you didn’t see it, you’d have to have felt the impact. Or heard it. The front bumper is dented, there’s blood on it… ”
He got convulsively to his feet, went to the window, stood staring out. “The headache wasn’t so bad when I left here,” he said in a low, pained voice. “But it’d worsened by the time I got to the village, got so bad I could barely see. I turned around, drove back a ways, and then I couldn’t see at all and I stopped-somewhere out on the cape-and just sat there, a long time, until it eased enough so that I could make it back here. I was afraid of hitting something or somebody, that’s why I stopped. I… I didn’t know I’d already hit the dog.”
Conflicting emotions moved through her: relief, concern, fear, even a small doubt. She stood and went to him, caught one of his arms and turned him gently until he was facing her. The deep pain etched in his face was frightening.
She said, “Jan, those headaches of yours seem to be getting worse, more intense. They worry me. You’ve got to do something about them. Call Dave Sanderson or something… ”
“I’ve already called him. He gave me a referral to a doctor in Portland. I’ll be seeing him on Tuesday.”
“I’ll go to Portland with you-”
“No, somebody has to stay here and take care of things.”
“I don’t like the idea of you driving all that way alone, not after last night.”
“I won’t drive if a headache starts.”
“Promise me that? Never again?”
“I promise. God, do you think I want to hit anything else with the car? Just the thought of that poor dog… ” He shuddered. “Novotny must be pretty upset, must think I’m some kind of criminal. Everyone else in Hilliard, too.”
“They’ll get over it when they hear the truth.”
“Will they?”
“Maybe if you call Novotny and apologize, explain what happened.. maybe he’ll listen.”
“It’s worth a try. But I remember when Thud was killed-the driver of the car that hit him apologized and we still suffered for weeks.”
Alix remembered too-all too well. Thud had been their big, solid yellow cat, named for the noise he made when lesser cats would have jumped off the furniture soundlessly. Years later she still felt his loss, still expected at odd moments to find him lurking in the kitchen next to his food bowl, or to hear him thudding through the house.
Jan forced a smile that was meant to be reassuring, squeezed her hand; but the fear still crouched in his eyes. She wondered if her own fear showed in her eyes, too, for him to see. His explanation hadn’t quite banished it, and neither had her sense of relief.
What if his headaches were no longer just the product of tension? What if something was seriously wrong with him?
Jan
Sitting morosely in front of the old wood-burner in the living room, he could hear Alix moving around the kitchen. She was making a lot of noise-thumps, bumps, clatters. Working off her anxiety at the same time. That was a trait he had always admired in her. Whenever she was upset or angry, she found some sort of physical labor to engage in; attacked it with a determination that bordered on the obsessive. And when the job was done, or when she had exhausted herself, her emotions were back in sync again. No grudge-holder, she. She could forgive anything in less than twenty-four hours.
Almost anything.
His pipe had gone out; he relighted it. He watched his hand as he did so, watched it tremble. An indicator of how overwrought he was today. How afraid.
The pain had been bad last night-that awful bulging. But that wasn’t the worst part. He’d lied to Alix about the worst part, his second lie to her in two days, because the truth was too painful. And the truth was, he didn’t remember the drive into the village proper, what had happened there or afterward, nor most of the drive back here. His memory ended with the bulging as he neared the county road, picked up again as he jounced along the cape road a half mile or so from the lighthouse.
Blackout. More than two hours of lost time. That sort of thing had never happened to him before… or had it? It could have; that was what made it so terrifying. You blacked out, you did things during that blank time, and then afterward you not only couldn’t remember what those things were, it was possible you didn’t even realize you’d had a blackout.
But no, this was the first time-it had to be. It was all somehow connected to the atrophying of his optic nerves, his imminent blindness, even though Dave Sanderson had been carefully noncommital when he’d called Dave earlier and told him about the blackout (but not the details of it, not that he’d been out driving and killed a dog).
“Blackouts aren’t common with the type of eye disease you have,” Dave had said. “But that doesn’t mean they can’t happen or won’t happen again. Your condition is rare; we just don’t know enough about it. I think you ought to see another ophthalmologist, find out if the degenerative process has speeded up any, or if there are any new complications. There’s a good one in Portland; I’ll call him for you right away.”
Then Dave had paused. And then he’d asked, “Have you told Alix yet?”
“No.”
“When are you planning to?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Doesn’t she suspect you’re having vision problems?”
“Not yet, no.”
“She will before much longer. Jan, I really think you’re making a mistake by not confiding in her. She’s your wife, she has a right to know. Why do you insist on hiding the truth from her?”
Because I’m afraid, he’d thought. Damn you, I’m afraid!
He’d gotten in touch with the Portland ophthalmologist, Dr. Philip R. Meade, and made an appointment for early Tuesday afternoon. And he didn’t want to go, because he was afraid Meade might tell him the degeneration was accelerating and he would be blind sooner than the year or two the others had projected; afraid he wouldn’t be able to stay here the full term, wouldn’t be able to finish his book; afraid he would experience more blackouts. Afraid of everything these days, that was Professor Jan Ryerson, eminent authority on beacons in the night.
Abruptly he stood, went to the stove, added fresh lengths of cordwood to the blaze inside. His pipe had gone out again; he laid it in the ashtray alongside the telephone, reclaimed his chair. God, he thought then, that poor dog. But it’s not possible I deliberately ran it down last night, even in a blackout state. Novotny’s wrong. It had to have been a freak accident.
Try calling again, he told himself. Whoever had been occupying the Novotny line the past hour-he had called three times in those thirty minutes, busy signal each time-had to hang up sooner or later.
Sooner the line was clear this time. Three rings, four. And then a man’s voice said, “Hello?”
“Mitchell Novotny, please.”
“You’re talking to him. Who’s this?”
“Jan Ryerson. Out at the lighthouse.”
Silence for several seconds. Then, coldly and flatly, “What the hell do you want?”
“To tell you how sorry I am about your dog.”
“Yeah? Then what’d you run him down for?”
“I didn’t, not deliberately-”
“I seen you do it.”
“No, you’re mistaken. It was an accident. I don’t remember seeing the dog; I didn’t know until just a little
