awkward about the man. But wasn’t there? Hadn’t there been one blip in time when Chuck had been clumsy in his movements? Yes. Teddy was sure the moment had happened. But he couldn’t remember the specifics. Not right now. Not here.
And, anyway, the whole idea was ridiculous. He trusted Chuck. Chuck had broken into Cawley’s desk, after all.
Chuck, right now, was risking his career to get to Laeddis’s file.
They’d reached the door and Al said, “Just go back to the stairwell and follow those steps up. You’ll find the roof easy enough.”
“Thanks.”
Teddy waited, not opening the door just yet, wanting to see how long Al would hang around.
But Al just nodded and walked back into the cell block and Teddy felt vindicated. Of course they weren’t watching him. As far as Al knew, Teddy was just another orderly. Noyce was paranoid. Understandably so—who wouldn’t be in Noyce’s shoes?—but paranoid, just the same.
Al kept walking and Teddy turned the knob of the door and opened it, and there were no orderlies or guards waiting on the landing. He was alone. Completely alone. Unwatched. And he let the door close behind him and turned to go down the stairs and saw Chuck standing at the curve where they’d run into Baker and Vingis. He pinched his cigarette and took hard, quick hits off it and looked up at Teddy as he came down the steps, and turned and started moving fast.
“I thought we were meeting in the hall.”
“They’re here,” Chuck said as Teddy caught up to him and they turned into the vast hall.
“Who?”
“The warden and Cawley. Just keep moving. We gotta fly.”
“They see you?”
“I don’t know. I was coming out of the records room two floors up. I see them down the other end of the hall. Cawley’s head turns and I go right through the exit door into the stairwell.”
“So, they probably didn’t give it a second thought.”
Chuck was practically jogging. “An orderly in a rain slicker and a ranger’s hat coming out of the records room on the admin’ floor? Oh, I’m sure we’re fine.”
The lights went on above them in a series of liquid cracks that sounded like bones breaking underwater. Electric charges hummed in the air and were followed by an explosion of yells and catcalls and wailing. The building seemed to rise up around them for a moment and then settle back down again. Alarm bells pealed throughout the stone floors and walls.
“Power’s back. How nice,” Chuck said and turned into the stairwell.
They went down the stairs as four guards came running up, and they shouldered the wall to let them pass.
The guard at the card table was still there, on the phone, looking up with slightly glazed eyes as they descended, and then his eyes cleared and he said “Wait a sec” into the phone, and then to them as they cleared the last step, “Hey, you two, hold on a minute.”
A crowd was milling around in the foyer—orderlies, guards, two manacled patients splattered in mud—and Teddy and Chuck moved right into them, sidestepped a guy backing up from the coffee table, swinging his cup carelessly toward Chuck’s chest.
And the guard said, “Hey! You two! Hey!”
They didn’t break stride and Teddy saw faces looking around, just now hearing the guard’s voice, wondering who he was calling to.
Another second or two, those same faces would hone in on him and Chuck.
“I said, ‘Hold up!’”
Teddy hit the door chest high with his hand.
It didn’t budge.
“Hey!”
He noticed the brass knob, another pineapple like the one in Cawley’s house, and he gripped it, found it slick with rain.
“I need to talk to you!”
Teddy turned the knob and pushed the door open and two guards were coming up the steps. Teddy pivoted and held the door open as Chuck passed through and the guard on the left gave him a nod of thanks. He and his partner passed through and Teddy let go of the door and they walked down the steps.
He saw a group of identically dressed men to their left, standing around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee in the faint drizzle, a few of them leaning back against the wall, everyone joking, blowing smoke hard into the air, and he and Chuck crossed the distance to them, never looking back, waiting for the sound of the door opening behind them, a fresh round of calls.
“You find Laeddis?” Chuck said.
“Nope. Found Noyce, though.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
They nodded at the group as they reached them. Smiles and waves and Teddy got a light off one of the guys and then they kept walking down the wall, kept walking as the wall seemed to stretch a quarter mile, kept walking as what could have been shouts in their direction hit the air, kept walking seeing the rifle shafts peeking over the battlements fifty feet above them.
They reached the end of the wall and turned left into a soggy green field and saw that sections of the fence had been replaced there, groups of men filling the post holes with liquid cement, and they could see it stretching all the way around back, and they knew there was no way out there.
They turned back and came out past the wall, into the open, and Teddy knew the only way was straight ahead. Too many eyes would notice if they went in any other direction but past the guards.
“We’re going to gut it out, aren’t we, boss?”
“Damn straight.”
Teddy removed his hat and Chuck followed suit and then their slickers came off and they draped them over their arms and walked in the specks of rain. The same guard was waiting for them, and Teddy said to Chuck, “Let’s not even slow down.”
“Deal.”
Teddy tried to read the guy’s face. It was dead flat and he wondered whether it was impassive from boredom or because he was steeling himself for conflict.
Teddy waved as he passed, and the guard said, “They got trucks now.”
They kept going, Teddy turning and walking backward as he said, “Trucks?”
“Yeah, to take you guys back. You want to wait, one just left about five minutes ago. Should be back anytime.”
“Nah. Need the exercise.”
For a moment, something flickered in the guard’s face. Maybe it was just Teddy’s imagination or maybe the guard knew a whiff of bullshit when he smelled it.
“Take care now.” Teddy turned his back, and he and Chuck walked toward the trees and he could feel the guard watching, could feel the whole fort watching. Maybe Cawley and the warden were on the front steps right now or up on the roof. Watching.
They reached the trees and no one shouted, no one fired a warning shot, and then they went deeper and vanished in the stand of thick trunks and disrupted leaves.
“Jesus,” Chuck said. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
Teddy sat down on a boulder and felt the sweat saturating his body, soaking his white shirt and pants, and he felt exhilarated. His heart still thumped, and his eyes itched, and the back of his shoulders and neck tingled, and he knew this was, outside of love, the greatest feeling in the world.
To have escaped.
