Ray took a moment.

  “Who?”

  “Come on, Ray, don’t try that. Your only friend in the world, you know Lou Bates.”

  “I got friends, you sonofabitch.”

  “Sure you do, boy, you got lots of friends. What if they implicated you? What if Lou Bates confessed? You and Turk Adams and him, the whole story.”

  Ray sat there, thinking.

  “He’s lying.”

  “I don’t think so. Why would he lie to implicate himself?”

  Ray looking around the room.

  “You’re lying,” he said. “If Lou had done that you would of taken me to Grant Center.”

  “We’ll get you to Grant Center, don’t worry. Like a beer?”

  “Is it poisoned?”

  Bobby Andes laughed. He nodded to Ingrid Hale. “Get us a beer, girl.” She went to the back and brought out a six-pack. She gave beers to the three men and took one for herself. Bobby Andes opened his but did not drink. Ray drank his bringing both handcuffed hands up to his mouth. Bobby said to Ingrid, “Now maybe you can help Tony guard our pal here while I make a call.”

  She was alarmed. So was Tony. “What sort of call?”

  “Police work, right? What I gotta do. You watch him and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “Watch him? Bobby? How?”

  “Tony will guard him, won’t you, Tony? Take this gun. Here, I’ll show you how it works.”

  They went into the alcove and turned their backs to conceal the demonstration from Ray, who sat smirking on the cot. Tony didn’t want to admit how scared he was. Miserable, Ingrid asked Tony, “Can you use it?”

  “I can try,” he said.

  “You must think I’m a pretty dangerous guy,” Ray said.

  “You’re not dangerous, crumb,” Bobby said. “You’re a cockroach. Pest control. A little exercise in pest control.”

  “Don’t leave us, Bobby,” Ingrid said.

  “Relax,” Bobby said. “It’s only five minutes. You want we should tie him down? Would that make you feel better?” He looked at Ray. “Okay crumb, looks like we better fasten you to something.” He looked around. “Frame on that cot,” he said. “Here Tony, take the key and unlock one of them cuffs, hook him to the bed frame.”

  Bobby Andes went around to the side of the cot, pointing the gun at Ray to cover Tony. Tony felt nervous getting so close to Ray, who was grinning, the vicious grin he remembered, and Tony could smell the onion on his breath. He was clumsy unlocking the cuff on Ray’s left hand, and his hands trembled. He pulled the handcuffs down close to the bed frame, requiring Ray to bend forward. He was afraid Ray might attack and had to remind himself Bobby Andes was protecting him with the gun.

  “Christ you guys,” Ray yelled. “You can’t make me sit like this.” He was doubled over.

  “Sit on the floor,” Andes said.

  “Shit.” He dropped down with his back to the cot, and Tony locked the handcuff to the frame. “How can I drink my beer?”

  “Use your free hand.”

  Bobby stood back and looked at him like a painting. “That make you feel safer?” he said. She looked at him pleadingly. “Okay,” Bobby said. “We’ll make you safer still. Tony, go out to my car and get the leg irons.”

  So they put on the leg irons, and then Ray was sitting on the floor with one hand raised and attached to the cot next to his shoulder, his two feet linked together, and one hand free for his beer can, which he kept sipping from.

  “That’s cruel,” Ingrid said.

  “Yeah, it’s cruel,” Ray said.

  “You want to be cruel or safe?” Bobby said. “I’ll be back in five minutes. If you have to use the gun, use it.” He went out, and they heard the car turn around and drive down the road.

  Suddenly it was quiet, as if Bobby had taken away the noise. The gun was heavy in Tony’s lap. He looked at Ray shackled and stretched out on the floor by the cot. He kept one hand on the barrel, the other ready remembering the motions necessary to release the safety and cock it. He thought, My God, I am sitting here with a gun in my lap. I am holding a man prisoner, my own enemy who has tortured me for a year. It’s good he’s shackled, for otherwise I would have to depend on the threat of this gun, which I have never used.

  Ray said, “Your guy is crazy.”

  “He’s a good man,” Ingrid said.

  “You think he’s crazy though. You’re crazy too,” he said to Tony.

  Tony heard the night through the screened windows, the frogs at a distance, a pond somewhere, and after a while the water in the river, close to the porch. He heard the silence spreading out to the traffic on roads far away. He remembered the anarchy of the wilderness and felt the weight of his responsibility. This now, it’s all because of me.

  Bobby Andes was gone a long time. Tony asked Ingrid, “Where is that telephone?”

  “Down by the gas station,” she said. She wondered what was keeping him. She got more beers from the refrigerator and gave one to Tony, who declined it, and another to Ray on the floor. She fried some eggs and bacon.

  “Yay momma,” Ray said. “You fixin us something to eat?”

  They were afraid to unlock him, which made eating hard for him. He could use only one hand. He said Ingrid was a real nice lady, but he felt like a fuckin animal in the zoo.

  She began tapping her foot. “Bobby, Bobby,” she said.

  “Looks like he run off and left you,” Ray said. “You and me, the three of us, alone together.”

  It was dim, the room gloomy, with only the one light, a sixty-watt bulb hanging from the cross beam. The brown cardboard walls, pictures from magazines posted with thumbtacks, wild animals, mountains, a calendar three years old. Fishing rods, a shovel, a two-man saw, stacked together in the corner. A musty smell, an old remnant of skunk. Even in the night Tony was conscious of the cavern shaped around the house by the trees, a feeling of damp woe, of rotted memory, of Bobby Andes’s misery.

  Somewhat later Ingrid asked Tony about his wife and daughter. Ray was watching, listening to everything. “We went to Maine every summer,” Tony said.

  “You had a good marriage?”

  “We had a fine marriage. An ideal marriage.”

  “No problems?”

  “I can’t recall any.”

  She said, “That’s very unusual.” Snicker from Ray.

  She said Bobby had had a bad marriage. He played around, which his wife didn’t like and eventually she divorced him. His teenage daughter committed suicide, and his son left town and hadn’t been back in six years. This was where they had spent their summers in the old days.

  “He told me he had only one child,” Tony said.

  “That’s what he tells people.”

  Herself, she didn’t believe in marriage. She was the receptionist in Dr. Malcolm’s office, and in her spare time she was writing a historical romance. She had been coming out to Bobby’s camp on weekends for about five years. She mentioned Bobby’s illness, how unlucky he was. She was considering sacrificing her principles to give him six months of happiness, for she was afraid he was heading for a breakdown. He seemed so mad and fierce lately. The chief complication was Dr. Malcolm. She glanced sharply at Ray. “It’s no secret,” she said. “They know about each other.” Ray snickered.

  That makes her sound wanton. But everything about her was under control and regular. Actually, she said, she didn’t care about love. Her two relationships, it was a convenience and kindness for everybody. She kept them calm, she was not a passionate type.

  She said to Tony, “I can’t tell what type of person you are. Anyone who had a perfect marriage, that baffles me.” She looked at Ray. “As for you. God knows what you are.”

  “I’m just a ordinary simple fella, maam,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  She said to Tony, “Do you know what he plans to do tonight?”

  Tony didn’t.

  “Police work,” she said. “Out here? God knows when any of us will get to bed.”

  “Damn right, lady, jeez I need my sleep,” Ray said.

  She ignored him. To Tony: “Maybe you could help Bobby.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a professor, he admires your kind of people. If you could talk to him, calm him down.”

  He felt sick, because he thought of Bobby Andes as helping him. The other way round had never occurred to him.

  She saw his look and shrugged her shoulders.

  Shackled Ray from the floor spoke up. “Hey lady, how about helping me?”

  “I want nothing to do with you,” she said.

  “It’s cruel. You said so yourself. I got a crick in my back, I can’t move, I feel like a fuckin animal in the zoo.”

  “You’ll have to wait until Bobby comes back.”

  “Christ, he ain’t coming back.”

  “What do you want? There’s no way I’m going to let you go.”

  “Jeez I ain’t asking you to let me go. Just unlock my fuckin legs and let me sit in the chair. You got the gun. What more do you want? I ain’t going no place.”

  Tony didn’t want to look at Ingrid, for he knew she was looking at him. He knew she thought they should undo Ray’s leg irons. Probably he thought so himself, for he felt ashamed looking at Ray on the floor. It made him uneasy, though.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “Let’s wait for Bobby,” he said.

  After a while a car approached, the light shining through the window. Reading in her chair, Ingrid muttered, “Thank God.”

  Car door outside, footsteps light on the gravel, then the screen door opened and a young woman in a red miniskirt walked in. She looked confused. Ray looked up. “Well,” he said.

  “My God, it’s Susan,” Ingrid said.

  The girl named Susan looked at Ray on the floor. “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Where’s Bobby?” Ingrid asked.

  “How should I know. Isn’t he here?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Leslie kicked me out again.”

  Ingrid laughed. “Well if you’re willing to sleep in the woods or something.”

  The woman named Susan was looking at Ray’s leg irons.

  “Are you playing a game?”

  “A little police work here. Meet Tony Hastings and Ray Marcus. Ray Marcus is a prisoner.”

  “A real prisoner?”

  “Hi Susan,” Ray said. “Pleased to meet you Susan.”

  “Tony is a visitor from out of town. Ray is charged with murder.”

  “Not anymore,” Ray said. “They dropped the charges.”

  Susan had a lot of makeup marking off the parts of her face. Her eyes were surrounded by dark color. She looked at Ray and shrank a little.

  “Listen Susan,” Ray said. “Tell your friends they can get me off the floor now.”

  “What’s he talking about?”

  “He doesn’t like the leg irons.”

  Susan gasped. She had just noticed the gun in Tony’s lap.

  “Are you a policeman?” she said.

  “Tony’s the victim of the crime Ray is charged with.”

  “I thought you said the crime was murder.”

  “Christ, they think I’m going to jump them. They got the gun and the cuffs, and they still think I’m going to jump them.”

  “Oh shit,” Ingrid said. “Let him up, for Christ sakes.”

  Tony Hastings was glad for her decisive words. He knew their precautions were excessive, and they made him feel cowardly. The only thing was to be careful. They did it deliberately, with Ingrid holding the gun at Ray’s temple while Tony unhooked the hand from the bed frame, then locked the wrists together, and then released the irons. He stepped back and took the gun from Ingrid, and Ray struggled to his feet and sat in the chair.

  Ray looked resentfully at them all. “Jesus,” he said to Susan, “they think I’m from outer space.”

  “What’s Bobby going to do to him?” Susan said.

  “Police work,” Ingrid said. “My God, what’s keeping him?”

  “Where is he?”

  “Making a telephone call. He’s been gone a whole hour.”

  “He’s crazy,” Ray explained to Susan. “She was telling Tony here, he’s out of his mind and she don’t know what to do.”

  “You be quiet, you don’t know the least thing about it.”

  “You’re worried he’s going to get his ass fired.”

  “You shut up. You don’t know anything.”

  “I’m not so dumb, lady.”

  “You’re a monster. You’re a murderer. You’re a rapist. You’re a horrible creature.”

  “Don’t be a bitch, lady. It ain’t nice.”

  FIVE

  Susan has no time for more than a passing thought on the appearance of her own name on the page or to remember that this particular Susan was named by Edward, who didn’t have to do that. There’s time only for a moment to savor the melancholy of Bobby’s camp and think of the pervading grief in all summer places, cabins or cottages in the woods or on the shore, Penobscot Bay or the Cape in childhood, Michigan now, which is not just the memory sadness when childhood is over and the place is gone, nor the generic sadness of boarding up the windows, but sadness of the height of the season, of bright sightseeing days as well as foggy ones in the hammock, of August silence, retreat of the birds, the goldenrod, the goodbye in every greeting. The sad vanity of measuring time by summers, eliding winter and the rest of things.

  Assert the present. Snow covering the car tracks in the streets. On the ice, arcs and figure eights with shrieks and music under the high roof. Henry lagging along on buckled ankles watching Elaine of Astolat’s fairy ass in her short skirt sail away a hundred miles an hour into the center with the big boys. As the new cycle begins.

  Nocturnal Animals 23

  So there was Tony Hastings sitting with a gun in Bobby Andes’s camp, watching Ray Marcus on the cot with handcuffed hands in his lap. There was Susan in her red miniskirt in the wicker chair. There was Ingrid Hale fussing in the alcove. Ray was looking at Susan’s legs with a grin on his face. They were waiting for Bobby Andes, wondering what had happened to him. Tony was thinking, what keeps that man prisoner is his belief that I would use this gun to kill him if he tried to get away.

  Susan explained herself to Tony and Ray. “I am Bobby’s cousin. When Leslie kicks me out I come here.”

  “Come any time you like,” Ray said.

  She was conscious of his eyes on her thighs and she looked at him boldly. “Hey mister,” she said. “Who did you kill?”

  “I didn’t kill nobody.”

  She asked Tony. “Who did he kill?”

  “He killed my wife and daughter.”

  Her eyes opened. “When did he do that?”

  “A year ago.”

  She looked again at the man on the cot, who was instantly different, alien or another species. In a whisper as if to pretend he could not hear though of course he could she said, “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Tony said. “I saw him do it.”

  He felt shock in the room, and Ray leaned forward. “Why, you’re a liar, mister, and you know it.”

  So Tony told his story again, conscious of his real audience at last on the cot, pretending not to hear, but he felt as if too much telling had made it no longer quite true.

  She murmured, “How horrible, how horrible for you.” Then, “Are you back to normal now?”

  He almost said yes, then saw the gun in his lap, in the dark strange cabin, with Ray across the room, and said, “No.”

  “No?”

  He thought, I want to murder everyone in this room. No, that’s stupid. He changed his mind. “I’m all right,” he said.

  She cheered up. “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a professor of mathematics.”

  She didn’t have anything to say about mathematics. He asked, “What about you?” He had a notion she was disreputable, maybe a prostitute, and he wondered how she would put it.

  “I’m a singer.”

  “Really? Where do you sing?”

  “Right now there are no openings. I work in the Green Arrow.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a bar,” Ray said.

  “It’s a night club,” she said. Ray smirked.

  She yawned. “Excuse me,” she said.

  “Bobby, Bobby, it’s so late,” Ingrid said. She looked at Susan. “Maybe you should go to bed.”

  “Maybe you should all go to bed,” Ray said.

  “You want to sleep in the bedroom?” Ingrid asked Susan.

  “Sorry I can’t stay, myself,” Ray said. “I got my sweetie waiting for me.”

  “Bobby won’t mind?”

  “To hell with Bobby,” Ingrid said.

  “That’s telling him,” Ray said. “Way to go.”

  “I don’t want to take your bed,” Susan said.

  “Use the cot,” Ray said. “Sleep here. We won’t mind.” He looked at Tony and grinned. “Will we, Tony?” Tony remembered he hated him.

  “Maybe Tony wants to sleep too,” Ray said. “You and Tony want to lie down on the cot? I won’t mind, Ingrid can guard me, okay Ingrid?”

  “Don’t be disgusting,” Susan said.

  “Come on, baby, I know the girls in the Green Arrow. Sweet chickies. Ain’t they, Susan?”

  “Just ignore him,” Ingrid said. She asked Tony, “Do you know if Bobby was planning to put you up for the night?”

  “I have a motel,” Tony said.

  “I can sleep on the floor if I have to,” Susan said.

  “You can sleep on the cot like I said,” Ray said. “With him. You can turn out the lights and go to town. Me and Ingrid won’t mind.”

  “You shut up,” Susan said. “For your information, asshole, there aren’t any chickies in the Green Arrow, I’m the only girl there, so you don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned to Tony. “Excuse my language. But an asshole is an asshole.”

  Ray was restless, squirming in his chair. He kept moving as if to get up, and every time he did that Tony tightened his grip on the gun. He kept thinking about what this power he was supposed to have depended on. One human being with the means to hold another down: this gun, that human being. He thought, Do I remember how to use it? If I had to, could I aim well enough to hit him before he got me? If he gets up and moves around, can I threaten to kill him? And could I actually do it? And if I did it, what would be my legal excuse? The question startled him, he had not thought of it before. Obeying the lieutenant’s orders, if those orders were outside the law? An act of murder to support an act of kidnapping? He thought, Why, I can’t use this gun. I might as well not have it.

 

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