Well, why not? He had lost his job, had probably lost his room at the Buracks’—had lost all there was to lose in this town.
His fist curled around the keyring.
He left his uncle grunting in the heat.
Nancy Wilcox knew as soon as Travis came through the door that something was terribly wrong. It was the afternoon, for one thing, that lull between lunch and dinner when the grill was allowed to cool and at least a little breath of wind stirred the tepid air of the diner. Travis should have been at work. He should not have been driving his uncle’s black Ford pickup, parked now on a crazy diagonal outside. And if that were not enough, she could tell there’d been trouble just from the look of him: his hair ratty and tangled, his eyes squeezed shut as if against some unbearable vision.
She surprised herself by thinking, Now it begins. She had sensed in Travis even that first day in July a tremor of wild energy, pent up, volatile as a blasting cap. And maybe that was what had drawn her to him, that wildness. He was like a freight train carrying her down some dangerous track and away from her childhood. Now it begins.
She untied her apron-—her fingers trembled— and said, “Travis?”
“Come and talk,” he said. “I need to talk to somebody.”
She nodded and put the apron on a stool. The only customer, an unemployed bank clerk spooning mechanically at a bowl of Campbell’s soup, gazed at her in mute incomprehension.
“Back by dinner, Mr. O’Neill!” she called out, and moved to leave before O’Neill, the owner, could stir himself from the kitchen. Maybe she would lose her job. Probably she would. But that was part of it. She would shed all that: job, town, her mother, respectability. Become some new thing. The bell tinkled behind her as she eased the door closed.
They drove down The Spur toward the railway tracks.
“I followed her last night,” Travis said. Far out this old dirt road he pulled over. The tracks lay baking in the Indian-summer heat, oily and bright. His voice was hoarse. “Followed her up here.”
Nancy nodded. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.” He frowned and shook his head as if there were some dream- there he could not dislodge. “She watched a train go by. I fell asleep. I guess that’s all that really happened. But it seemed like—” He looked pleadingly at her. “Like she talked to me. Said that something big was on the way and she was at the center of it, and she needed my help. And in a way it was like I said yes, gave her my promise. Ah, Jesus. I don’t know how to say it—”
“I understand.” Hadn’t she had the same feeling herself? Sensed it, perhaps, the first time she saw Anna Blaise standing huge-eyed in the doorway of the Buracks’ shuttered house? Nothing specific, nothing as intense as what Travis had experienced; but that feeling of the woman’s helplessness, unmistakably of coiled mysteries waiting to be unsprung. “I said so all along.”
“I lost my job at the plant. Had a fight with Creath. Likely be kicked out of the house, too.” He looked at her. “I should go to her while I still can.”
She could not mistake the implication in that.
“You love her?”
“Nancy … I can’t say” “You love me?”
He gazed at the bright slash of the railway tracks cutting the horizon.
Even this was not as painful as she might have expected. She believed in free love, yes, love given freely and perhaps as freely taken away. But it was not that: the thing was, curiously, she did understand it… understood, at least, that what had drawn Travis to Anna Blaise was not sex or love in any ordinary sense, was not something she could hope to compete with.
She loved Travis. She had admitted that to herself weeks ago. But he was more than that: he was her freight train, she thought grimly, the vehicle of her destiny. There was little enough in him of pleasure or of happiness,- she had learned that. But for better or worse she was bound to him. She had to hang on.
“So how do we help her?”
He looked giddy with gratitude.
“Talk to her,” he said. “We talk to her.”
Now, Nancy thought. Now it begins.
He started the engine.
“Travis!” Aunt Liza exclaimed. “Thank God you’re safe!”
She stood in the dim light of the parlor, dusting, wearing an old housecoat, her hair pinned up. Travis regarded her with a mixture of wariness and compassion.
“We’re going up to see Anna, Aunt Liza.” He felt Nancy clutch his hand.
“Travis?” She frowned. “Why aren’t you at work? Are you ill?”
“We can talk later, Aunt Liza.”
Her expression hardened. “It’s that thing upstairs, isn’t it? That female thing.” She blinked. “You stay away from her.”
“Later, Aunt Liza.” They moved past her and up the stairs, and Travis wondered briefly whether he might not be insane—whether he had allowed an hallucination to drive him to this extremity. He squeezed Nancy’s hand and pushed through the door to the attic room.
He thought at first it was empty. The single brass bed was carefully made-up, the rose-patterned bedspread folded at the foot of it. The window shades were down,- the yellow light swam with dust motes. Anna, he saw then, was sitting primly in one corner, in a straight-backed cane chair, her hands folded in her lap; She looked up at Travis and then at Nancy. Her face was expressionless; when she spoke the words were precise and clipped. “Close the door.”
Mute, Travis obeyed.
Anna drew in a deep breath, sighed.
“Help me,” she said. “I need your help.” Gazing at Nancy: “Both of you.”
Nancy stepped forward—bravely, Travis thought; though surely there was nothing here to be frightened of?
“You’re sick,” Nancy said, “is that it?”
“That’s one way of thinking of it. Though not exactly correct.” Anna tilted her head. “I can’t explain everything at once. I’m sorry.”
Travis nodded. He was transfixed once more by the perfection of her. Her skin was terribly pale but seemed almost luminous—smooth as jade, alabaster-white. Even her smallest motions were fluid and deliberate. She stood in wild contrast to the barren room, the black Singer sewing machine hunched over the floorboards like an insect.
He hated himself for the thought, but next to her Nancy was gross, plain, thickly ordinary.
“All I need,” Anna Blaise went on, “is time. I’m not certain how much. A few weeks … a month, maybe. I need time and I need privacy. It’s not precisely an illness, but I’ll be helpless. And I’ll change.
I apologize for not being more exact.” She stood up. “If I stay here I could be in danger. You understand? That’s why I need your help. The Buracks—” “I know,” Travis said.
He told her about his fight with Creath, about losing his job.
“Then we have very little time,” Anna said. “Is there somewhere I can go?”
“The shack,” Nancy said. “The old switchman’s shack out by the railroad. Travis? We could fix it up for her. If it’s only for a couple of weeks, I mean, while the weather’s warm.”
“It’s private?” Anna asked.
“It’s that, yes.”
“Then it will do. Travis, can you take me there?”
“Now?”
“Now would be best. While I’m still in control.”
The implications of that disturbed him, but she seemed very sure of herself, so he said, yes, the truck was just outside; but then the front door slammed, an echo that resounded through the old house. Creath was home.