Chapter 10
The night drowned Maria in its terrifying depths. She could feel it slipping around her like wet rubber, pasting damp, cold leaves against her naked skin. Far off, somewhere, there had to be a road, but she didn't know how to get to it. She ran and didn't stop, until finally, a tree slammed into her. She grabbed hold of its cold, rough bark and held on, panting. She couldn't force herself any further, and she expected to hear Arlene's hellish, demanding voice. She turned quickly, looked behind her.
Nobody followed her.
Jim's crazy action seemed impossible to her. Why hadn't he yelled, fought with Arlene, done something? What had happened to him, back there on the top of the hill? What had killed him off in the very heart of their lovemaking?
How could he slip off like that and let Arlene come and take her? At the thought of Arlene's fingers, Maria shivered violently. It seemed to her then that the night turned into an enormous black spider. It pursued her, crawled after her, swallowed her with its ugly mouth.
She wanted to scream and couldn't, for her throat had been emptied of sound. She felt the rough bark of the tree and tore at it with her fingernails. After several attempts, she made her lips move, trying to call for help: "Please help me, somebody!"
Her words slid through silence, and she heard them, but she stood alone. Nobody could hear her. Yet she knew she had to talk, had to say, "Please...!"
She touched her lips to the bark, kept muttering words nobody could hear. She knew it. She knew she was lost, that Jim was gone, that everybody in the world was gone, that somewhere, back there hidden in the night, Arlene followed her, stalked her.
"Oh, help, please!"
She flung her naked hips tight to the tree, then forced herself to leave it. She ran across fields, fences, another field. Every step pained her naked feet, and she knew they must be bleeding, but she didn't think about them. She ran. She walked, then ran again...
She had no gauge of time. The moon looked mad in the revolving sky, but it seemed to her that it took her years before she got to the road. She stood on a tall slope above it and watched it wind between a long double row of trees. Between the trees, in strange pulses of occasional moonlight, she saw the road's shiny black surface.
She saw it and thanked her luck. She looked down at her nakedness, and it seemed to her as if she could never force herself to walk down there. It would be too embarrassing to stand naked beside the road, waiting for a car, but finally she went down.
No cars came however, and the longer she waited the more naked and scared she felt. She had no way of covering herself. She thought desperately of using leaves like Eve, but the idea seemed too stupid. She stood back behind the huge trunk of a maple and waited. A night-bird called somewhere. She shivered and knew it was a small back road, that there could not be much traffic on it.
Perhaps she had waited for half an hour, perhaps more, when she peered out and saw two headlights approaching. It was a car all right, but it came so slowly she couldn't even hear the sound of its motor. She stared at the lights, and it seemed to her as if the driver were going slow on purpose, almost as if he were looking for someone. Instantly, she thought of Arlene. She wanted to hurl herself back and run into the fields and escape.
Her feet hurt too much. She was too scared. It made her heart tremble when the car got close to the tree, but she shivered desperately and forced herself to put out her hand. She stuck out her whole arm after it, and pressed herself closer to the bark.
The car stopped at once. She heard the car door open, and then a man's voice spoke softly. "Hey, Sue, is that you? I've been looking for you ever since I got your phone call. My motor went out, and you were gone when I got there."
It was Ken's voice, and he started to walk towards her. She could hear the heavy tread of his feet, and she felt so amazingly happy. It was as if finally, after a long winter of suffering, spring had suddenly come out of nowhere. If came as suddenly and mysteriously as the willawah, which cuts through the Canadian snows with its hot sudden breath and makes the ice disappear within a few hour's time.
Ken stepped closer, and she had to stop him. "Ken-wait. Don't come near."
"Hey, what's up?"
"I don't have any clothes on. "
"So, what's wrong with that?" His voice sounded amused.
"Please don't be funny. I was never happier to see anybody in my life, really, Ken."
He didn't ask her any more questions. She could hear him start to walk back to his cab, but he stopped. "Don't sweat, Sue. I've got an old raincoat back in the heap. I'll get it for you."
In moments, he came back, and offered the raincoat, and she hurried to slip into it. Once more, she felt as if she belonged to the human race, as if she had escaped from a long night's hell. She walked away from the tree trunk, and looked at Ken. He stood there, so confident, beside his cab, looking up and down the road. Only when she got close, did she see that his face wore a tight expression which pulled his mouth in severely at the corners.
"What's the matter?" Sue asked.
"Oh, it's nothing, Sue. I went to the Blue Boar Motel. Hank told me you'd been there... you and that guy. I found out about your car too."
"And?"
He didn't answer. His face seemed to strain even more as he looked back down the road in the direction from which he had come. "Who's that dame, Sue? She sure is an odd one. You know, she kept following me around as if she wanted to talk to me, as if she wanted to ask me something, but she didn't."
Suddenly, unavoidably, Maria shivered. She tried to imagine what had happened back at the motel, and she could only guess Ken and Arlene had met at the same time outside the Club. "When did you see her?"
"It couldn't have been long after you and your friend took off, but then she beat it, too." He turned and looked at her, and Maria watched him flubbing a fat right hand behind his ear. "She must've took off like a shot. One second I'm talking to her, the next she's gone."
"Ken, what's bothering you?" She looked at him steadily, and when the moon fell just right, she saw his fat cheeks rise up tensely under his eyes, and push his eyes into deep slots. He seemed almost scared.
"Nothing, Sue, nothing. Come on."
They got in, and Ken turned the car around and drove back towards town. They sat together in the front seat, silently, for about ten minutes, when she remembered to ask him the time.
"It's about midnight, Sue."
At that second, she glanced over and saw a flash of light in his rear-view mirror, and then she watched him discover it too. It seemed to surprise him for some reason, and he kept glancing up at the mirror. His anxiety grew, and she felt she had to calm him down. "Heck," she said, "it's probably only a farmer coming into town early."
"Yeah..." His voice trailed off, and she felt him press down hard on the accelerator. The motor roared, and they picked up sudden speed. They should have left any slow-driving farmer far behind, but moments later, sharp headlight beams shot by on the left side and a car edged up fast in an attempt to pass.
Ahead of them, the road swung into a series of curves, and Maria noticed that Ken tried to keep in front. He tried to hold the center of the road, but the other car kept nosing up behind them. The shrill mounting sound of speed screamed like a witch's keening in her head, and she looked at Ken. "Why don't you slow down? Let them go ahead?"
He made a rough sound in his throat. "I'd sort of like to, Sue, but something tells me I'd better not."
He gunned his cab fast between a long series of white guard-rails, and the other car crashed hard into his rear bumper. The impact knocked her against the dash, and then, before she realized what had happened, Ken was fighting the wheel, trying to keep them out of the ditch on the far left-hand side of the road.
His action gave the other car a chance to pull up on the right, near her door. Maria held onto the dash, and watched the struggle. The other car had pulled close and kept forcing Ken towards the ditch, but he yanked at the wheel, swore under his breath.
Maria looked at the other driver, and now she could see very clearly who it was. Both cars must have been running at 60 or 70, and she didn't recognize the other car, but Arlene was driving it, and Arlene's face looked like a white, jagged piece of paper ripped from a book.
The speed and violence of the race made her sick. Arlene opened the window and shouted at her, "Maria, you tell that son-of-a-bitch to stop and let you out. I want to see you. I've got something to tell you, Maria. I'm sorry about that other."
Speed screamed. Metal screamed as the two cars rubbed side by side, and Arlene's voice screamed in her brain. Maria watched Ken, and deliberately kept from looking at Arlene. On the next curve, which swung left, Ken gunned the car, and they shot ahead on the inner curve. Arlene dropped back, and the race picked up more and more speed.
Ken kept up a steady stream of swearing, and Maria watched a black-and-white landscape rip past. Nothing seemed fixed or still in the black-and-white fields, and a hard steel line rocketed whitely down the center of the road. She watched it race at her, and she thought it would slash through her, like a wildly flashing razor blade.
"Ken, I'm scared."
"Hey!" he said not turning his head. "Don't let me snow you, kid. I'm plenty shook up myself." He didn't take his eyes off the road, but stayed there wrestling the wheel.
Maria stared at the red arrow on the speedometer. It went to 80, to 85, then to 90, and then it dropped back. At one point, on a long straight stretch, it shot over 95, yet the other car hurled itself alongside. Metal screamed like a sharp, sick bone-fracture, and Ken rode the wheel with all his strength.
Arlene's fierce, triumphant shout rang clearly out of the whirlpool of speed. "If you don't tell him to stop, I'll run you off the road. You can die for all I care."
Maria stared over at the fierce white slash of Arlene's face and said nothing. She fought against Arlene, she would not let herself give in to that force. She could not give in to it, and she felt her brain whirling in a torment of black and white speed. Speed increased, and her eyes followed an exploding, expanding road. If anything were on that road ahead of them, they could never stop in time...
Ken must have sensed her feeling, for he dropped his hand on her knee. "Don't worry, kid. We'll make it."
"It's not me, Ken," she said, "I'm worried about you."
"Another mile, and we can get rid of her."
"How?"
"You'll see."
She tried to count the racing seconds. She tried to weigh them against her hope. The road screamed under them like a wickedly wriggling serpent, and black-and-white trees whipped past them like exploding black-and-white chess-pieces across her universe. Wild motors throbbed like two gigantic, overly rapid beating, hearts.
She stared at the hurtling road. She watched Arlene. Suddenly, a white sign flashed the name of some town on her right. She watched Ken push down harder on the gas. A few isolated houses blazed past, and then they were close to a river and a bridge. She saw the white flash of guard-rail. It sickened her.
The bridge loomed up sharply to the right. Ken braked quickly, skidded in a sickening curve, but fought his way out of it somehow, and they came out dead center on the bridge. The cab picked up sudden speed, and Maria had-as she looked back-only a split-second of time to watch Arlene's attempt at the same quick turn.
Arlene didn't make it. Her car hurtled off the bank into the river, and Ken said nothing about it. He continued driving on into the night.
Finally, when they got close to Hollyhock, he turned to her. She tried to relax. She couldn't. Her black-white nightmare had merged into soft grey. In the world outside the car, everything seemed mixed with buttermilk, and she wasn't strong enough to fight anymore.
"Whatcha want to do, Sue?"
She felt herself shivering in his raincoat, and she couldn't control herself. "Gosh, Ken, I don't know. I can't even think."
"Want to stay over at my place?"
"Ken, I've bothered you too much now."
"Come on, kid. Cut it out. I'll fix you a drink, and you can sack out. There's that apartment over my garage. Ain't nobody in it now." He smiled at her and his face seemed to hold a world of nothing but pure kindness.
She reached over suddenly, touched his shoulder, and it surprised her that his shirt was wet with sweat. "Thanks, Ken. I sure appreciate it."
His house was on King Street, which followed along the gully, and his garage backed right over the deep cut in the earth. She went into his kitchen, had a good stiff drink, and then he took her out and pointed up the stairs.
"Here's the key. There's everything up there you'll need. I'll see you in the morning, and for God sake's, Sue, don't worry about a thing."
She crawled into the bed, covered up and tried to go to sleep. Something knocked her into sleep faster than she could have imagined, and she rolled up in deep slumber...
She never knew what woke her up. It might have been a distant telephone. When she looked out the window, she saw that the moon had gone down, and the night was as black as carbon. She stared out towards Ken's house, and then she saw him step quietly out his kitchen door. He took a quick look up towards her window, then got into his cab and drove off.
For a long time in bed, trying to think about nothing, she wondered where he had gone, but then she thought it must have been somebody wanting a ride somewhere, and she went to sleep and thought no more about it.