All The Way — 139
After two weeks other sensations began to crowd it off the
front page, but it didn’t die entirely. Several things kept it
alive. One was the continuing search for the man who had
looted the car, and for Chapman’s body. Then there was the
concrete flamingo; that had caught the morbid public fancy.
But everybody had accepted it now, and we were safe. She’d
write, or call, and let me know where she was.
She didn’t. Another week went by. I was growing to hate the
apartment. Being away from her was bad enough but being
reminded of her every minute I was in the place made it
unbearable. And he was in it. I had the rug shampooed, and
all the time the men were working on it I wondered if I were
going as mad as Lady Macbeth.
But I couldn’t leave. I could have had the mail forwarded, of
course, but suppose she telephoned? There was no way at all
I could find out where she was. Presumably she’d left
Thomaston, but she was supposed to get in touch with me. I
waited, hating the place but hating to leave it, even for food.
Even when I was sunbathing in the back yard I left the door
open so I’d be able to hear the phone. Two hours before the
postman was due I was pacing the floor by the front window,
watching for him.
Then, on December 18, it came at last. It was early in the
morning. The boy had thrown the paper up on the walk and I
was starting out to get it when a Post Office van stopped and
the driver got out with an Airmail Special. It was from
Houston, Texas. I ran back inside, forgetting the paper, and
tore it open.
Dear Jerry:
This is a very difficult letter to write, but I’ve
avoided it as long as I can. I lied to you. I suppose
you have begun to realize that by now, and I’m not
asking for forgiveness, but I do think I should have
the courage to face you and admit it. So if you still
want to, will you come to see me here at the Rice
Hotel?
Sincerely,
Marian.
All The Way — 140
I stared at it, bewildered. What did she mean, she’d lied to
me? And then, suddenly, I remembered the other thing she’d
said, that night of the 13th. “I took advantage of you.” None of
it made any sense. She hadn’t lied about anything, as far as I
could see.
But I was wasting time like a fool when I could be on my
way to Houston. I grabbed the phone and began calling for
reservations. I could get a flight out at one p.m. That would
give me just about time enough to pick up the money. It was
in a safe-deposit box in a Miami Beach bank. I hurried into the
bedroom, changed clothes, and started packing. The phone
rang. The airline, I thought, as I picked it up.
“Mr. Forbes? I have a telegram from Houston, Texas. The
text reads as follows: URGENT DISREGARD LETTER SEE
NEWS STORY. There is no signature.”
“Thank you,” I said. I hung up and ran out in the yard for
the paper I’d completely forgotten.
It was on the front page, date-lined New Orleans but with
the usual eye-catching local headline tag:
—FLAMINGO CASE—
NONSENSE, SAYS PSYCHIATRIST
I sat down, feeling a chill of apprehension.
New Orleans, La. Dec. 18—Dr. J. C. Willburn, wellknown
professor of psychiatry and author of a
number of books on mental illness, stated today
that in his opinion it was highly improbable if not
completely absurd that Harris Chapman could have
deteriorated from apparent good mental health to a
psychotic condition in two weeks, no matter how
deep-seated his feeling of guilt.
Dr. Willburn, who is on leave of absence, became
interested in the case at its outset, and for the past
three days has been in Thomaston interviewing
dozens of Chapman’s friends and associates. He
says he unearthed no prior instances of
hallucination or irrational behavior at all and that
the picture he has of Chapman is that of a
practical, hard-driving, relatively insensitive,
All The Way — 141
vigorous man in the prime of life, too given to hard
work for brooding or much introspection—”
The whole thing exploded in the papers again. The police
said they’d never ruled out the possibility the insanity was
faked. I was scared all over again, but what was even worse I
didn’t dare try to get in touch with her. But at least I could get
out of the damned apartment, because I knew now where she
was. I canceled the lease by paying an extra month’s rent, and
moved to the Eden Roc Hotel. I bought some expensive
clothes and luggage, spending money like a maharajah, and I
drank too much.
The story went on. Another psychiatrist intimated that
Willburn’s statement was ill-advised. Nobody could form a
psychiatric opinion from second-hand evidence gleaned from
lay observers; Chapman could have been in a potentially
dangerous mental condition for months. A third psychiatrist
said the second psychiatrist was ill-advised. The police were
still suspicious of the fact his body had never been found. And
by now they knew I’d bought the wrecking bar. The man in
Palm Beach who’d sold it to me gave them a good description.
So was this the act of a madman buying a weapon to defend
himself against a woman he’d wronged, or that of a coldly
logical schemer buying it to jimmy open his own car and fake
the theft along with the rest of the fantastic hoax?
But what object could he have had?
By now it was almost inevitable. On December 20, when I
grabbed the paper off the breakfast trolley in my hotel room
and spread it open, the bottom began falling out of
everything.
—FLAMINGO CASE—
WAS CHAPMAN
REALLY CHAPMAN?
The story didn’t mean anything itself; it was merely a
rehash of all the old evidence with the addition of a lot of
conjecture. But now that the question had finally been asked,
they’d check those signatures, start pinpointing descriptions
— But I had to be sure before I ran, so I could warn her. I
waited. It was like walking on eggs. Two hours later the
afternoon papers were out.
All The Way — 142
RIDICULOUS, SAYS
CHAPMAN FIANCEE
The police had already questioned her about that, she
explained to the reporter in a long-distance interview. Of
course she’d talked to Mr. Chapman. He’d called her every
day. She would never understand what hold that woman—
Mrs. Forsyth—had over him, or what she had said or done
that goaded him beyond endurance—
Stripped of the vituperation, it said simply: The man she’d
talked to was Chapman.
I grabbed the phone and called the travel desk. “Get me a
reservation to Houston on the first flight you can.”
The girl called back five minutes later and said there’d been
a cancellation and I could get out at eleven-thirty. It was ten
now. I started throwing things in bags. I’d already bought an
attache case with a good lock; calling the desk to get my bill
ready and send a boy for the bags, I ducked out to a cab, and
went to the bank. In a cubicle in the safe-deposit vault, I
emptied the bundles of currency into the case, took the same
cab back, and told the driver to wait while I checked out. We
made it to the airport with five minutes to spare. I was over
the weight allowance, and had to pay excess baggage. They
were just starting to pull away the loading ramp when I
sprinted out the gate with the attache case under my arm.
I had to change planes in New Orleans. It was seven-thirty
p.m. when we came in at Houston International. I hurried to
the first booth and called the Rice Hotel.
“Mrs. Forsyth,” I said.
“Just a moment. I’m sorry, sir. She isn’t registered.”
I fought down an impulse to yell at her. “But she was there
—”
“I’ll connect you with the desk, sir.”
“Never mind,” I said. I collected my luggage and caught a
cab into town, and went to the Rice.
The clerk consulted his records. “Yes, sir. She checked out
two days ago. No forwarding address.”
“All right, give me a room,” I said.
All The Way — 143
I tipped the boy and as soon as he left I flipped through the
phone book to detective agencies. Several had night numbers
listed. I called one.
He arrived in about thirty minutes, an untidy and owlishlooking
man named Krafft. I told him what I wanted.
“She was here at the hotel until two days ago,” I said. “Just
find out where she went, as fast as you can. I don’t even know
whether she had a car. If she left town, the chances are it
would be by air, so try the airlines first.”
He called back in less than an hour. “Mrs. Forsyth left here
the afternoon of the eighteenth on an American Airlines flight
to San Francisco.”
”Good,” I said. “Does your agency have an office there?”
“Yes, sir. All major cities.”
“Okay, look— Wire or teletype right now and tell them to
start on it. If they find her, keep track of her. I don’t care what
it costs. I’ll be at the Mark Hopkins Hotel, just as soon as I
can get there.”
I couldn’t get out until the next day. It was ten-thirty p.m.
when I checked in at the Mark Hopkins. I’d wired for a
reservation. There was a note waiting for me to call a Mr.
Ryan, at a Garfield number. As soon as I was up in the room I
called him.
“Mr. Ryan? This is Forbes, at the Mark Hopkins.”
“Oh, yes, Mr. Forbes. About Mrs. Forsyth—”
“Have you found her?” I broke in.
“Not yet. She arrived here the night of the eighteenth and
registered at the Palace. Checked out at two-thirty p.m.,
eighteenth, no forwarding address. We’ve covered all the
airlines and railroads, so apparently if she’s left town it was
by bus or private car. But she left the hotel by cab. We haven’t
been able to find the driver yet. She might have taken an
apartment, or be visiting a friend. Can you give us any hints? I
mean, apart from the description?”
“Yes,” I said. “She went to Stanford, so you might try
around Palo Alto; she could be looking up somebody down
there. I doubt she’s looking for a job, but if she does, it’ll
probably be in a brokerage house. She has a beautiful flair for
clothes. Keep an eye on the City of Paris and I. Magnin’s, and
All The Way — 144
so on. If she’s taken an apartment it will probably be in a
good neighborhood.”
“We’re checking the apartment angle now. Utilities, and so
on.”
“All right,” I said. “Just find her. Use as many men as you
can put on it.”
They found her the next afternoon. Ryan called a little after
five. “You were right about the Palo Alto thing. She’s been
down there. She came back today, and registered at the
Fairlane Hotel. It’s a fairly small place, on Stockton. Room six
hundred and eight.”
“Thanks a million,” I said. “Just send me your bill.”
I depressed the switch, looked up the number, and gave it to
the operator.
“Mrs. Forsyth, please,” I said, when the Fairlane answered.
“One moment, sir.”
The phone buzzed twice. “Hello.” It was her voice. I could
almost see her.
“Marian!” I said. “Marian—”
She screamed.
All The Way — 145
Fourteen
It was five o’clock and traffic was snarled. When we were
within a block of it I tossed the driver a dollar and ran. I
didn’t even pause at the desk. When I got out of the elevator, I
asked the operator, ”Six hundred and eight?” He pointed to
the right.
It was the third door. I rapped. She opened it almost at
once. She was a little thinner, and very pale, but as smooth
and striking as ever. She was wearing a dark tailored suit. I
pushed the door shut. There was the same wonderful, slender
feel of her in my arms. I kissed her. She tried. I could feel her
trying, but she couldn’t quite do anything with it. It was no
wonder, I thought, with what had just happened. But it was
impossible to let her go. I kissed her eyelids and her throat,
and the smooth dark hair.
Finally she whispered. “You did have one very small piece of
luck, Jerry; I’m not much given to crying. Otherwise you’d
need a shower curtain.”
“Why?”
“Your kissing me this way after what I did to you.”
“What did you do?”
“I sold you out, I suppose you’d call it, in about the most
cynical way it would be possible to do it.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I said.
All The Way — 146
“I think we’d better sit down,” she suggested. “Take the
armchair.” She sat on the side of the bed. I looked around. It
was any small hotel bedroom anywhere—Venetian blinds,
glass-topped desk, telephone, grayish carpet, and twin beds
with dark green spreads and metal headboards finished to
resemble limed oak. She crossed her knees and pulled down
her skirt. I looked at the slender, tapering fingers.
“Why did you run away from Houston?” I asked. “I was
going to warn you if it became serious.”
“I wasn’t running from the police,” she said. “From you. I
lost my nerve again.”
“Will you go with me to Reno tonight and marry me?”
She closed her eyes and lowered her face slightly. Then she
shook her head. “No, Jerry.”
“Will you go away with me without marrying me?”
“Please, Jerry—” She stopped, but then made an effort and
went on. “I’ve already told you I lied to you. About our going
away together. Maybe I wasn’t consciously lying at the time, I
don’t know. I might even have thought I could do it. But that
isn’t the point.
“Listen, Jerry,” she went on, “I asked you to do something
criminal, for money. As long as you were cynical enough to do
it for money, only half the responsibility was mine. Do you
understand? But then you said you’d changed your mind. You
wouldn’t do it. But you were in love with me, you said. So I
said, that’s fine, Jerry. If you won’t commit a crime for money,
commit a crime because you’re in love with me—”
Her hands were twisted tightly together and shaking, and
she stopped for an instant and clenched her teeth to stop the
tremor of her chin. It was as if her whole face had already
shattered, and she was merely holding it together with an
effort of will.
“—After all, old men commit sexual offenses against
children somewhere every day, don’t they? So let’s be
efficient. Let’s don’t waste a nice handy thing like your being
in love with me, when it could be put to some practical use,
like luring you into becoming involved in a capital crime and
ruining your life—”
All The Way — 147
I reached over and caught her arms. “Will you stop it? The
whole thing was my fault. If I’d had the guts of an angleworm
I could have made you give it up.”
She shook her head. “There’s no way you could have
stopped me, Jerry. You don’t stop a blind obsession like that.
The only thing I could see was that I’d lost everything after it
was already too late to start over again, so the thing to do,
obviously, was to destroy everybody else too. Including you.”
“I’m not destroyed, if you mean Chapman. After what he did
to you, he doesn’t bother me.”
“He will,” she said. “Unless you get the fact firmly fixed in
your mind that you didn’t do it. I did.”
“Cut it out,” I told her. “We both did it. But do you think it
will continue to hold up? Remember, if they ever put a real
expert on those forgeries they’re going to look very fishy.”
“There’s no reason they ever should. However, I’d like to
point out something; you’re in the clear, even if they find out
it was an impersonation. They can’t prove you ever met me
before it happened. You were using the name of Hamilton,
remember. And when I came down from New York, I called
you as Mrs. Forbes, but I used another name on the plane
tickets. Also, en route from the airport to the apartment, I
switched taxis in Miami.”
I nodded. “When can I bring the money over to you?”
“Tomorrow,” she said apathetically. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It wasn’t the money at all, was it?”
“No.” Then she added. “Or maybe I tried to think it was,
partly.”
I lit a cigarette and walked across the room to look out at
Stockton Street through the slats of the blind. I came back
and stopped in front of her. “Is it just the voice?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. That thing when you called just
now was only because I was off guard, and didn’t know you
were anywhere near. The principal reason I don’t want to go
with you is that I’ve done you enough harm already. Why add
to it?”
Did the other men who’ve been in love with you have this
same trouble getting a message through?” I asked. “Did any
of them ever manage to convince you that you might be the
thing he needed, or wanted, or cared about?”
All The Way — 148
Her hands were beginning to twist and shake again. “Jerry,
please don’t.”
“No,” I said. I crushed out the cigarette. “If I hadn’t given
up too easily the other time, I might have won. So this time
I’m going to try just once more. And after that I’ll shut up for
good.” I squatted beside the bed, balancing myself on my toes
with my forearms across her lap. “I know you don’t love me,”
I said. “Maybe you’ve been hacked down so thoroughly it’ll be
years before you can care anything about anybody. But I’ll
settle for less. I’ll try to say this without slopping over or
getting too sticky about it. I just want you. I want to be with
you. I want to try to help you. Maybe together we can still
work this out some way; at least we could try. We’ll go
anywhere you say, on any terms you want, if you’ll just give
me a chance. After a while I think you’d associate the voice
with me instead of with him. I don’t think they ever made
anybody else like you, and probably they never will again. I’m
crazy about you, and I always will be. But that’s enough of
that. I think you’ve quit trying to deny that I’m in love with
you. It’s just a question of whether you’ll go with me. will you,
Marian?”
I looked up at her. She’d turned her face away, and the chin
was locked again and she was crying without making any
sound at all. She looked at me at last, and shook her head.
I stood up. She started to come with me to the door, but
stopped with one hand resting on the back of the chair. By
this time she could trust herself to speak, and she said, “Good
night, Jerry,” and held out her hand.
“Good night, Marian.” I looked back from the open doorway,
and, as always, she reminded me of something very slender
and beautifully made and expensive—and utterly wasted—like
a Stradivarius in a world in which the last musician was dead.
I closed the door and went on down the hall.
She killed herself that night. She must have taken the
capsules shortly after I left, as nearly as I could tell from the
medical reports in the news. There was nothing about it in the
morning papers, of course, and I still didn’t know it until noon
when I walked into the El Prado bar on Union Square with a
Call-Bulletin under my arm.
I spread it open and took a sip of the Martini.
All The Way — 149
SUICIDE CONFESSES
—Mrs. Marian Forsyth, 34—
It caught me without defense at all and kept swamping me
and I couldn’t get it under control. I pretended to choke on
the Martini and got the handkerchief out and honked and
sputtered and snorted while I was heading for the men’s room
to spare the dowagers behind the snowy tablecloths and halfacre
menus the sight of a grown man crying in the El Prado in
broad daylight. Fortunately, there was no one in the John. I
was all right by that time, and could wash my face and go
back outside. I folded the Call and drained the Martini and
walked all the way back up Nob Hill to the Mark. I sat down
on the bed to read it, but it was a long time before I even
opened the paper. She was dead; what else mattered? The
headline said something about a confession, and it occurred
to me that if she had left one they’d be here for me before
very long. I really ought to do something about it.
Why hadn’t I left her alone? She had that absurd feeling of
responsibility for my being mixed up in the thing, and
apparently my presence reminded her of it. Maybe if I’d
stayed away from her she might have been able to handle the
other thing.
And I could have stopped her that night if I’d said no and
stuck with it. I rubbed a hand across my face. It was nice to
think about it now. And I had a hunch now wasn’t the only
time I was going to think about it.
I read the story. She’d died of an overdose of sleeping pills.
The medical examiner believed she had been dead since
before midnight, and that she must have taken them very
early in the evening.
I thought of her alone in her agony. She had no one. She
had a bleak, miserable, impersonal hotel room and her own
courage and that almost unshakable poise, and that was it.
She hadn’t asked for any help, or cried out. She’d merely held
out her hand, and said, “Good night, Jerry,” and waited for me
to leave so she could take them.
Christ, I thought shakily, I’ve got to stop this. I’ll be walking
out the window.
All The Way — 150
There were two notes. The first was to the local police and
contained instructions regarding the burial arrangements.
The second read:
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
On 28 November, 1957, an automobile belonging to
Mr. Harris Chapman of Thomaston, Louisiana, was
found abandoned on Sugarloaf Key, in the State of
Florida. It is believed that Mr. Chapman is dead,
but this has never been officially ascertained.
Mr. Chapman is dead. I destroyed him. I am solely
responsible for this act, and may God have mercy
on me.
In making the above statement, I am aware that I
shall be dead within the next few hours.
(Signed) Mrs. Marian Forsyth.
I went over to the window and stood looking out. I was free
now of even the possibility of suspicion or arrest. Down in the
hotel safe was an attache case containing almost a hundred
and seventy thousand dollars. It was all mine—money,
immunity, everything. I was the beneficiary of a tormented
girl who had just committed suicide in a hotel room. And I
couldn’t even go to her funeral.
She’d asked to be buried in a little country churchyard only
a few miles from Thomaston. What would I do if somebody
spoke to me? Pretend to be mute? All I could do was send
flowers.
She took all the blame for this thing we had done, gave me
all the money, and I sent dowers to her funeral.
Well. I’d been looking for a free ride all my life, hadn’t I? So
now I had one.
* * *
I went to Mexico—not to Acapulco, but to a little fishing
village just up the coast from La Paz, in Baja California, where
there were no tourists, practically no accommodations, and no
one who spoke English. It seemed that now I had plenty of
money, all I wanted to do was live like a beachcomber. I wore
dungarees and swimming trunks and lived on tortillas and
beans and drank nothing at all.
All The Way — 151
After a while I quit waking up with the cry frozen in my
throat as she went over the bridge railing and fell down
through the fog, and gradually I quit staring at darkness for
hours on end with that thing running through my mind: why
hadn’t I stopped her? She was caught in a blind obsession,
not knowing—or perhaps not even caring—that if she killed
Chapman it would destroy her. But I’d known it, hadn’t I? I’d
been warned. And I’d failed her.
For the only time in my glib and cheaply cynical, wise-guy
existence I’d really meant something that I said, and I hadn’t
been able to make her understand it or believe me. I simply
hadn’t tried hard enough. During those twenty minutes in the
apartment that night I’d had the opportunity to stop this
obscene and senseless waste of a woman who was worth a
thousand of me, and I’d muffed it, and let her go on down the
drain, and if I didn’t stop lying here at night thinking of how
many years of my life I’d give just for one more chance at
those twenty minutes I’d go mad. That was the thing I had to
whip.
But it was going away. I was slowly whipping it. And even if
the Mexicans heard me when I woke in the night, it didn’t
matter. They didn’t understand English.
She had wanted to confess, there in that last hour, but it
was evident that she was driven by an equally strong, or even
stronger, compulsion to protect me for the rest of my life. She
felt responsible for me. It was a sort of noblesse oblige. She
was older than I was, and more intelligent, and she felt she
had taken advantage of the fact that I had fallen in love with
her.
I thought about guilt. That was the theme. She was going to
kill Chapman and make it appear he had been destroyed by
his own conscience and his haunting fear of the taint of
mental illness. It had worked, and then she’d inevitably been
destroyed by her overpowering burden of guilt. It went on,
like a string of popping firecrackers setting each other off.
Except that here it stopped. I had no feeling of guilt for him,
not any more. In the first place, I had a much more elastic
conscience; it had been stretched considerably over the years
to fit different shapes of situations. And I hated him,
furthermore, for what he had done to her. And in the end, I
All The Way — 152
hadn’t actually killed him anyway. Perhaps that was the final
irony of it. She’d told me how to save myself.
Always hold on to that, she’d said. You didn’t do it. I did.
Three months passed, and I knew I was all right. It was all
going away. The police couldn’t touch me, and I was safe in
that epidemic infection of guilt. Marble shattered, but not
rubber.
* * *
I went back to San Francisco in the spring, completed
transferring the money from the safe-deposit box into three
banking accounts, and booked a passage on a Grace Line
freighter for the Canal zone. I knew now what I was going to
do—go into business as a big-game fishing guide in the Gulf of
Panama. I’d liked Panama, and there was a boatyard I knew
there where I could have a magnificent sports fisherman built
for much less than I could in the States, a real sixty-thousanddollar
job with the best of everything.
But in the week before the ship sailed there was one thing I
had to do before I left for good. I flew to New Orleans. First, I
spent two days in the public library, going back through the
newspaper files. There was no further mention of the case
after the latter part of February; it was apparently headed for
oblivion, unsolved—not if she had done it, of course, but how.
The police were almost certain now that she had left her
hotel in New York that night of 13 November and flown to
Miami under the name of Mrs. Wallace Cameron. Then they’d
lost her trail in Miami. The night clerk at the Dauphine
remembered he’d given Chapman a letter when he checked
in, and that Chapman had asked for a cab and gone out
somewhere within a few minutes after arriving, but whether it
had been to meet her nobody would ever know. Had she come
to kill him? Or to taunt him with something guilty in his past
that eventually drove him mad?
Three handwriting experts were convinced that the
signatures on the two checks and the receipts were forgeries,
while Coral Blaine and Lundgren were just as strongly
convinced the man they had talked to could have been no one
but Chapman. Police had followed my trail back and forth
across Florida, and while they had a dozen different versions
as to my age and the color of my hair and eyes, the composite
All The Way — 153
picture was that of Chapman, just as she had said it would be.
The only things the witnesses were certain about were the
wrong things, the ones I’d deliberately planted.
Chapman Enterprises was being liquidated by his father.
Coral Blaine was gone from Thomaston. The whole senseless
tragedy was complete, except for how, and that was
unanswerable. But they did know who had been responsible
for it all, because she had admitted it—the rejected and
embittered woman who had been his mistress.
I rented a car and drove up-state, buying the flowers at one
of the towns along the way. The name of the little community
was Bedford Springs, but it wasn’t on any of the highway
maps, and all I knew about it was that it was some fifteen
miles from Thomaston.
I’d puzzled for a long time as to why she’d wanted to be
buried in a backwoods churchyard in Louisiana when her
family would be in Cleveland. Then I’d finally decided perhaps
something good had happened to her in Bedford Springs at
some time in the past. I’d understood her coming to San
Francisco, where she’d been married to Forsyth, and the trip
down to Stanford, and what she was doing in those last few
days when she knew it couldn’t go on any longer.
It was late afternoon when I found it. It was miles off the
highway, and there wasn’t any town at all, just a white frame
church set under some oaks in gently rolling country of small
farms and hardwood and pine. There weren’t even any houses
near it. It was late April now, and all the trees were fully
leaved. I got out of the car in front of the church and walked
down to the little cemetery that was fenced and appeared to
be well-tended. Across the back of it was a row of slender
arbor vitae and beyond that a wooded ravine and tall trees,
and off to my right about a half-mile a man was plowing on
the side of a sandhill with a mule. There was no sound at all
except that of the birds and the trickling of water somewhere
in the rave.
I found her grave, and put the flowers on it, and looked
around, thinking it was one of the most remote and beautiful
places I’d ever seen. Then suddenly I knew why she had
remembered it in that final hour of her torment in the hotel
room in San Francisco, and what it had represented to her.
All The Way — 154
Peace. Just peace. It hit me without any warning, as it had in
the El Prado bar, and I started crying. I couldn’t help it.
* * *
I sat in the car and stared across the railroad tracks at the
cotton gin. On the side of it was a large sign that said:
CHAPMAN ENTERPRISES. The day I ever felt any guilt for
him, I thought—that would really be the day. I’d never owned
any part of her for an hour, and she’d given him all of herself
for six years and then he’d thrown her away as if she were
something you merely bought and used like an expendable
item of inventory.
The town was as familiar as if I’d lived in it for years. The
street names clicked and fell into place in my mind as I drove
across it. I found her house and parked in front of it in the
lengthening shadows of the elms. It was a two-story white
frame with a neat lawn and some nasturtium beds in front,
only four blocks from the center of town. When the weather
was nice she sometimes walked to work. I got out of the car.
Somehow it wasn’t late afternoon now, but early morning,
and I could see her ahead of me in the sunlight with that
beautiful walk she had and the erect, patrician slenderness
and the smartness that must have appeared so out of place in
this little farming town, and the sleek dark head, complete
with the shallow saucer of a hat slanted across the side of it,
the one she’d worn the night she came back from New York.
And, somehow, even though I was behind her I could see the
fine blue eyes that were almost but not quite violet and their
nearly unshakable self-possession and poise, and the cool and
ineffably feminine humor in them as she leaned her chin on
her laced fingers that afternoon in Key West and asked, And
what other personality problems do you have, Mr. Hamilton,
besides shyness? And the same eyes filled with the sheen of
tears as she shook her head there in the hotel room in San
Francisco. No, Jerry. It’s too late. Our fine pink flamingo is
made of concrete, and I can’t carry it any longer. But you let
me have it, and I’ll find a place to put it down.
This was the square, in the center of town. I turned, right at
the corner, and walked along the south side of it, facing the
entrance to the courthouse where sparrows fluttered about
the eaves. How many thousand times had she stepped along
All The Way — 155
this walk, on Monday mornings and Saturday nights and the
white noons of southern Augusts? The doorway was between
Barton’s Jewelery Store and the Esquire Shop. I went up the
stairs where the slender heels had tapped, and turned right in
the corridor at the top. The etched glass of the doorway bore
the gold-leaf legend: CHAPMAN ENTERPRISES. I pushed it
open and went in.
The brown-haired woman in the ante-room looked up
pleasantly, and asked, “Yes, sir. May I help you?”
The inner door was closed. I crossed to it and pushed it
open. Mrs. English was watching me with a puzzled frown. “I
beg your pardon,” she said. “Where you looking for
someone?”
There were the three desks, and the safe, and the water
cooler, and all the steel filing cabinets, and to the right the
two windows looking out into the square. At the third desk,
near the door going into his private office, a brown-eyed girl
with a little dusting of freckles across her nose was busy at
her typewriter. She looked up questioningly.
The large desk in the center was hers. I crossed to it, and
touched it with my hands. Barbara Cullen had quit typing
now, and was staring at me, and I was aware that Mrs.
English had got up and was standing in the doorway.
“Could I help you?” Barbara Cullen asked.
In the slow unfolding of horror I seemed to be standing
outside myself, watching what I was doing but without any
power to control or change a movement of it. I might still get
away, if I ran now without opening my mouth, but there didn’t
seem to be anything I could do about it. I stood there, merely
feeling the desk with my hands. Then I crossed the room to
Chapman’s office, and went inside. Opening the center
drawer of his desk, I lifted out the pencil drawer and turned it
upside down to stare at the little card that was taped to the
bottom of it.
Right to thirty-two, left two turns to nineteen—
Both girls were in the doorway behind me. They gasped,
and when I turned they looked frightened and started to back
away.
“Who are you?” Barbara Cullen asked nervously. “What do
you want here?”
All The Way — 156
I went back to the large desk in the center of the room and
stood behind it, looking out at the square. Mrs. English
retreated to the ante-room. Barbara stood as far away as she
could, staring at me. The silence stretched out and tightened
across the room.
I gripped the edge of the desk. God, there must be
something left of her, somewhere. She’d sat here for six years,
with her bag in that lower left-hand drawer, touching this,
putting papers in that basket, picking up the phone— She’d
sat here, where I was standing now, and when she glanced up
she looked out that window at spring sunlight and the slow
eddying of traffic in winter rains and high-school football
rallies and funeral processions and the blue October sky.
I stared down at the whitening knuckles of my hands.
“Barbara,” I said, “it wasn’t her fault. You’ve got to believe it.
Some way, I’ve got to make them understand—”
She cried out. I looked up then, and her eyes were widening
with horror. “How did you know my name?” she asked. But it
wasn’t that. It was the voice; she’d already recognized it.
”Sit down, Barbara,” I said. “I won’t hurt you. But I’ve got
to tell somebody. I can’t stand it any longer. I can’t let her go
on lying there taking all the blame, when it was my fault. I
could have saved her. She couldn’t help herself—”
I heard Mrs. English dialing, out in the ante-room, but I
went on talking, faster now, the words becoming a flood. All
that time in Mexico hadn’t meant a thing; you never whipped
it or drove it away. You merely drove it underground, into
your subconscious, where it could fester beyond your reach.
When the men came up the stairs and into the room behind
me I was still talking, and Barbara was listening, but the look
of horror on her face was giving way to something else.
Maybe it was pity.
All The Way — 157
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