“What do you make of it, Doc?” one of the state troopers asked.
“I couldn’t tell for certain without an autopsy,” Milt said. “I imagine it’s a coronary, though, sudden shock, insufficient blood supply to the heart, that’s my guess.”
“Skid marks all over the road,” the second trooper said. “She yanked that wheel over in a hell of a hurry.”
Milt nodded. “She did everything in a hell of a hurry,” he said.
“Saved the girl’s life, though.”
“What girl?”
“Found this on the seat of the car.” The trooper held out a handbag. “There’s a junior driver’s license in it.”
“Whose?”
“Katherine Bridges,” the trooper answered. “That the woman’s daughter, Doc?”
“No,” Milt said. “She only has a son. We’ll have to notify him.”
“You want to take care of that, Doc? There’s one thing I hate, it’s calling up somebody whose—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“We better start looking for this girl,” the second trooper said.
“I’ll call in for the meat wagon,” the first trooper said.
That’s the way it ends, Milt thought. Rich or poor, full or empty, they call in for the meat wagon.
Darkness came to Talmadge suddenly and swiftly, because black is the color of nightmares. A high wind rose, blowing in off the ridges, penetrating the woods where Kate lay huddled to the ground, cold and frightened. She had no idea what time it was. She knew only that the sun seemed to vanish suddenly, the way it had this morning just before the thunderstorm, completely and swiftly abandoning the sky, and that darkness had followed immediately afterward. She lay in the darkness and whimpered and remembered the lifeless staring eyes of Julia Regan, her face turned sidewards on the wheel, death staring at her inside the tiny automobile, and again she shivered and tried to tell herself she would not go crazy.
But she knew she would. She knew before this day was ended she would lose her mind, and she lay huddled against the ground, feeling the cold wind rushing over her back and her legs, convincing herself she would, knowing she would, until the subtle line between reality and fantasy finally merged, and she wandered through a half-believed insanity, constructing images that were terrifying, almost play-acting a maniac, and then wondering if she had already gone insane, and then telling herself she was completely sane, and then knowing, believing, that crazy people always thought they were perfectly normal, and listening to the wind, and shuddering, and hearing the myriad sounds of night, the insects in the woods, the cars rushing by on the highway, sounds that seemed magnified, a moonless night, and darkness everywhere, the resounding darkness of horror, her flesh was cold, her mind reverberated with the events of the day, sunlight and rain, music and cacophony, the bitter argument, her mother cold and forbidding, her mother, her mother, her mother, she knew she was going crazy.
David, she thought suddenly.
And, thinking of him, all else rushed out of her mind, as if some powerful sucking wind had drawn everything down into a tiny funnel, drawn everything out of her mind to leave it white and blank, with first the single name appearing there on a white blank screen, David, and then the name fading, and the image of David replacing it. A new rush of thoughts followed the image, lucid and clear, his mother was dead, they would have notified him, he would have come up to Talmadge, he was here somewhere, he needed her.
This was the thought.
He needed her.
She got to her feet. She wiped her face. Her blouse was torn, and she had lost one shoe somewhere in the woods, but she stood up and tucked the ends of her blouse into her skirt, and she took off the remaining shoe, and she thought David needs me, and she began walking. She knew instinctively where he would be. She knew because everything suddenly seemed so clear to her, as if the single thought David needs me had erased the confusion of the morning and the bitter uncertainty and frustration of the afternoon, and the frightening terror of the monster milk truck and the wide staring eyes of the dead woman on the seat beside her. She knew where he would be, and she went there instinctively.
There was a single light burning in the house on the edge of the lake. She walked directly to the front door, but she did not knock. She opened the door and walked into the house. She passed a mirror in the hall, but she did not look into it.
He was sitting in the living room with the furniture covered with sheets, facing the window that overlooked the lake. The lamp burned next to his chair. He was sitting quite still, looking out over the lake, when she entered the room barefoot and soundlessly. He did not look up. She did not call his name. She went directly to his chair, and she sat on the arm of it, and he turned to her and looked up into her face, and she reached out gently with one hand and touched the back of his neck. With the other hand, she began unbuttoning her blouse, almost unconsciously, button by button, the hand at the back of his neck softly resting there, the other hand unbuttoning the blouse in a steady inexorable motion, and then she brought his head to her breast. She kept her hand on the back of his neck and gently, tenderly, she brought his head to rest on her breast, cradled there, and she said nothing. She simply held him to her breast with her hand on his head.
She stroked his hair. He seemed so very helpless in that moment. Looking down at his face, she could see the lines radiating from his eyes, the set of his mouth, he was really not a good-looking man, but she loved him very much in that moment, more than she had ever loved him before. And wanted nothing from him. The nights she had lain awake thinking of his kiss, thinking of his hands upon her body, these seemed not to have happened, or possibly to have happened to some child she once had known. She held his head to her breast, and she felt a love new to her, but a love nonetheless, powerful and abiding. He lay against her unmoving. She could hear his gentle breathing. She stroked his hair comfortingly, and she said nothing, holding him to her.
In a little while, she felt his tears on her flesh.
And now there was the will.
Now the shock was done and gone, now that day which had started for him with a telephone call to his New York apartment and the shocking words of Milt Anderson telling him his mother was dead, and the drive to Talmadge, and the body lying cold and lifeless in the mortuary, “Yes, that’s my mother,” he had said, and left the room and driven to the lake, that day was done and gone.
And the night was done and gone, too, the woman who had come to him in the night, not a child he had known, but a woman named Kate Bridges who offered him comfort and solace, who allowed him to cry unashamed, a magnificent woman named Kate Bridges who leaned back into the automobile when he dropped her off at her house and said, “I’ll be worrying about you, David. Call me, please,” and he had nodded and touched her face gently in thanks, the night was done and gone, too, and now there was the will.
The flowers wilting beside the open casket. The relatives and friends who came to express their sorrow. The funeral procession from the old Regan house through the town to the cemetery on the hill where his father was buried. The open grave with the two grave-diggers standing by it silently abused in the presence of a ritual they witnessed over and over again, holding their caps in their hands while the minister read the elegy, and the straps poised over the open earth were pneumatically released and the coffin sank slowly, slowly, into the receptive earth, and he walked homeward silently in the town where he’d been born, in the town where sometimes death came.