‘And I love you,’ I said.
‘Do you miss the squad?’
‘Miss it? Jesus, I feel as if I never left. All I’ve been doing today is talking to the boys.’
‘We’ll be there soon,’ Ann said. ‘It shouldn’t take more than a half-hour.’
‘Think we’ll get a place to stay?’
‘Oh, certainly,’ she said. ‘There are dozens of places.’
Chapter three
The town of Sullivan’s Comers was closed tight when we pulled into it. I hadn’t exactly expected the blare of neon, not after Ann’s earlier description of the town’s size, but I had hoped to see a living soul or two.
The town lay at the base of a steep hill. The hill came as a surprise because it was immediately around a sharp bend in the highway. You made the turn, and suddenly the road was dropping away in front of you, and your headlights picked out nothing but the blackness of the night and then a sign stating ‘SULLIVAN S CORNERS, Speed Limit 25 mph’; now they tell me. It was difficult to keep the Chevy down to twenty-five, especially on a roller-coaster hill like that one, but I remembered my recently concluded brush with the local law and burned Burry’s brake lining for all it was worth. I suppose I was being a little overcautious. Fred and his cohorts, like everything else in Sullivan’s Comers, were undoubtedly dead asleep.
The town seemed to start as soon as the hill ended. There was a short plateau at the bottom of the hill, and a traffic circle sat in the center of the plateau, ringed with a closed bar, a closed luncheonette, a closed hotel with a ‘No Vacancy’ sign, and a closed billiards parlor. There were no road signs at the circle. The only indication of any traffic instruction was a blinking yellow caution light strung across the street high above the empty police booth in the center of the circle. I stopped the car and leaned out of the window.
The town was dead still. There were crickets and katydids and an occasional animal sound from somewhere off in the distance, but that was all. The caution light blinked its gaudy yellow into the Chevy. The air was cold and heavy with moisture. I could see my breath pluming from my mouth. ‘Where to?’ I asked Ann.
‘The way I remember it,’ she said, ‘you drive through town and then take a turn down to the Point.’
‘Where are these dozens of places you mentioned?’
‘They should be on the road to the Point.’
I put the Chevy in gear, swung around the circle and drove through town, sticking to the twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed. The town had a temporary look to it. The main street was lined with the shops you find in any town, the grocers, and the butchers, and the dry goods stores, but they all gave the feeling of having been thrown up in haste, a feeling that they could have been disassembled in five seconds flat and taken underground in an atom bomb attack. There was, too, if a town can give out such a feeling at one o’clock in the morning, a sense of unfriendliness. The 23rd Precinct territory was certainly no happy valley. It was crammed full of humanity living under the worst conditions invented by humans for humans. It was dirty, and it was corrupt, and it overflowed with pimps, pushers, prostitutes, hoods, ex-cons, and petty thieves — but it was part of the greatest city in the world, and it beat like the heart-pump of that city and there was rich warm blood there and laughter in spite of the filth. There were muggings and knifings in the 23rd, yes. But there were also lovers walking hand in hand or stealing a kiss on a rooftop skylight. There were police locks on almost every apartment door in the 23rd, yes. But there were people behind those doors. There were shadows in the 23rd, and it wasn’t the safest place in the world to walk at night. But the sun shone during the day, and if the faces that turned up to the sun were dirty, they were nonetheless laughing.
I had the feeling that Sullivan’s Corners did not laugh very much. I had the feeling that the shadows clinging to the narrow alleyways between the clapboard-front buildings did not disappear with the sun. That’s silly, I know. Any small town might look menacing in the early hours of the morning. Any small town might look unfriendly. Then, too, I have the advantage of being able to second-guess the thing in the light of what happened later at Sullivan’s Point and in the town of Sullivan’s Corners. But what I felt that night had nothing to do with what was going to happen in the next few hours. I remember the feeling distinctly, and I remember turning up the car window because I felt suddenly chilled.
We almost missed the small sign nailed to one of the telephone poles. I was, in fact, past the cutoff when Ann said, ‘There it is, Phil.’
‘Where?’
‘We just passed it.’
I threw the car into reverse and backed up. The sign was no wider than six inches and no longer than the space it required to sloppily letter Sullivan’s Point. One end of the sign had been shaped into a point so that it formed an arrow. The road it pointed to was as black as Hitler’s heart.
‘Very inviting-looking,’ I said.
‘There are lights as we go on,’ Ann promised. ‘And places to stay.’
I looked at the speedometer and then tooled the Chevy onto the cutoff. The road was narrow and winding and hadn’t seen a paving contractor since it was laid by the Mohicans. We bumped and jostled along, raising dust every inch of the way. I looked at the speedometer again. We’d come four miles, and there still was not a light.
‘There used to be places,’ Ann said in a small voice. ‘Maybe they haven’t opened for the season yet. This is only June, you know.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Are you angry with me, Phil?’
‘No,’ I said honestly. ‘No, Ann. It’s just... well, you’ve had a rough day, and you only had a sandwich for lunch and... well, I was hoping we’d find a nice place. You must be exhausted.’
‘I am tired,’ she said. ‘What do you want to do?’
‘Well, let’s follow the road to the end. I couldn’t turn back here anyway. It’s too damn narrow.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Don’t be silly. If there’s nothing here, we can always go on to Davistown. You said that was pretty big.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Fine. We’re sure to get something there.’
‘All right, Phil.’ I could feel sleep crowding the edge of her voice. She sighed heavily, a sigh of utter exhaustion. Unconsciously, I pressed my foot more firmly against the accelerator.
We passed several motels during the next six miles, but they were all closed, no lights, no people, no cars. I was anxious to reach the end of the road and the Point now, because — even though I could have made my turn at any one of the motel courts — I was determined to see ‘these big pines, and this finger of land that juts out into the lake’. It was a foolish, kid way to start thinking, and I’d have saved Ann and myself a lot of unasked-for trouble if I’d just made my turn and headed for Davistown. But I wanted the satisfaction of at least having reached the place we’d started out for in spite of all the garbage we’d put up with that day. It didn’t make much difference to Ann because she was rapidly becoming unconscious on the seat beside me. She’d rested her head on my shoulder and pulled her legs up under her. I knew she was almost out because her skirt had pulled back over her knees during the tucking-of-legs operation and she hadn’t bothered to shove it back down again. She’s got good legs, Ann, but I wasn’t too interested in them at the moment because the road was still bumpy and winding and narrow and dusty and because I was filled with this compulsion to reach the Point, take a sniff of the pines and the lake, and then get back to civilization.
The light startled me, and I guess if I hadn’t seen the light I’d have driven straight into the lake and drowned us both. When I saw the light, I automatically reached for the brake pedal and that was when my headlights picked out the dock and the water. I stopped the car about ten feet from the dock, and then turned on the seat.