“I’ll phone the bridge,” Willie said.
I ran up the road to my car and followed the wagon. When I reached the near end of the bridge, traffic was beginning to line up in the right-hand lanes. The station wagon was standing empty at the head of the line.
I saw Susie out on the bridge, running hand in hand with the little boy toward the cable tower. A heavy man in patrolman’s uniform was jolting along some distance behind them.
I went after them, running as hard as I could. Susie looked back once. She let go of Ronny’s hand, moved to the railing, and went over. I thought for a sickening instant that she had taken the final plunge. Then I saw her light hair blowing above the railing.
The patrolman stopped before he got to her. The little boy loitered behind him, turning to me as I came up. He looked like an urchin, dirty-faced, in shorts and sweater that were too big for him.
He gave me a small embarrassed smile as if I had caught him doing something that he could be punished for, like playing hooky.
“Hello, Ronny.”
“Hello. Look at what Susie’s doing.”
She was holding on with both hands, leaning out against the gray night. Along the wall of clouds that rose behind her, lightning flickered and prowled like somebody trying to set fire to a building.
I got a firm grip on the boy’s cold hand and moved toward her. She stared at me without apparent recognition or interest, as if I belonged to a different race, the kind that lived past the age of twenty.
The patrolman turned to me: “You know her?”
“I know who she is. Her name is Susan Crandall.”
“I hear you talking about me,” she said. “Stop it or I’ll jump.”
The man in uniform backed away a few feet.
“Tell him to go further away,” she said to me.
I told him, and he did. She looked at us with more interest, as part of a scene responding to her will. Her face appeared to be frozen except for her wide roving eyes. Her voice was flat:
“What are you going to do with Ronny?”
“Take him back to his mother.”
“How do I know you will?”
“Ask Ronny. Ronny knows me.”
The boy lifted his voice: “He let me feed peanuts to his birds.”
“So you’re the one,” she said. “He’s been talking about it all day.”
She gave him a wan and patronizing smile, as if she herself had put off childish things. But with her white fingers clenching the railing, her hair blowing above it, she looked like half a child and half a bird perched over the long drop.
“What would you do to me if I came back over there?”
“Nothing.”
She said as if I hadn’t spoken: “Shoot me? Or send me to prison?”
“Neither of those things.”
“What would you do?” she repeated.
“Take you to a safer place.”
She shook her head gravely. “There is no safe place in this world.”
“A safer place, I said.”
“And what would you do to me there?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re a dirty filthy liar!”
She inclined her head to one side and looked down over her shoulder, into the depth of my lying and the terrible depth of her rage.
Toward the San Francisco end of the bridge, the tow truck that carried the roving patrol came into view. I made a pushing signal with both hands, and the patrolman repeated it. The truck slowed down and stopped.
“Come back, Susie,” I said.
“Yeah,” Ronny said. “Come back. I’m afraid you’ll fall.”
“I’ve already fallen,” she said bitterly. “I’ve got no place to go.”
“I’ll take you to your mother.”
“I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to live with those two ever again.”
“Tell them that,” I said. “You’re old enough to live with other people. You don’t have to stay over there to prove it.”
“I like it over here.” But after a moment she said: “What other people?”
“The world is full of them.”
“But I’m afraid.”
“After what you’ve been through, you’re still afraid?”
She nodded. Then she looked down once more. I was afraid I’d lost her.
But she was saying goodbye to the long drop. She climbed back over the railing and rested against it, breathing quickly and lightly. The little boy moved toward her, pulling me along by the hand, and took her hand.
We walked back to the head of the bridge, where Willie Mackey and his assistant were talking to some local officers. Willie appeared to have some clout with them. They took our names, asked a few pointed questions, and let us go.
chapter 28
Willie took Ronny with him in the station wagon. I hated to let the boy out of my sight. But I wanted a chance to question Susan before she saw her parents.
She sat inert while I extricated my car. The patrolman who had chased her out the walkway stopped the northbound traffic. He looked relieved to see us go.
She said in some alarm: “Where are you taking me?”
“To Ellen Storm’s house. Isn’t that where you wanted to go?”
“I guess so. My mother and father are there, aren’t they?”
“They arrived just before you did.”
“Don’t tell them I tried to jump, will you?” she said in a low voice.
“You can hardly keep it a secret. Any of it.” I paused to let the fact sink in. “I still don’t understand why you ran away like that.”
“They stopped me at the head of the bridge. They wouldn’t let me through. They started yelling at me and asking me questions. Don’t you ask me any questions, either,” she added breathlessly. “I don’t have to answer.”
“It’s true, you don’t. But if you won’t tell me what happened, I wonder who will.”
“When are we talking about? On the bridge?”
“Yesterday, on the mountain, when you went there with Stanley Broadhurst and Ronny. Why did you go up there?”
“Mr. Broadhurst asked me to. That Sweetner man told him about me – the things I said when I blew my mind.”
“What things?”
“I don’t want to talk about them. I don’t even want to think about them. You can’t make me.”
There was a wild note in her voice which made me slow the car and watch her out of the corner of my eye. “Okay. Why did you go to Mr. Broadhurst’s house on Friday? Did Albert Sweetner send you?”
“No. It was Jerry’s idea. He said I ought to go and talk to Mr. Broadhurst, and I did. Then we went up the mountain Saturday morning.”
“What for?”
“We wanted to see if something was buried there.”
“Something?”
“A little red car. We went up there in a little red car.”
Her voice had changed in pitch and register. It sounded as if her mind had regressed, or shifted to a different level of reality. I said:
“Who’s we?”
“Mommy and me. But I don’t want to talk about what happened then. It was a long time ago when I blew my mind.”
“We’re talking about yesterday morning,” I said. “Was Stanley Broadhurst digging for a car?”
“That’s right – a little red sports car. But he never got down deep enough.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. Ronny had to go to the john. I got the key from Mr. Broadhurst and took him to the one in the Mountain House. Then I heard Mr. Broadhurst yell. I thought he was calling me, and I went outside. I could see Mr. Broadhurst lying in the dirt. Another man was standing over him – a man with a black beard and long hippie hair. He was hitting Mr. Broadhurst with the pickax. I could see the blood on Mr. Broadhurst’s back. It made a red pattern, and then there was a fire under the trees, and that made an orange pattern. The man dragged Mr. Broadhurst in the hole and shoveled dirt on him.”