John D. MacDonald

A Matter of Trust

The week at his bedside was the immediate and necessary and unavoidable nightmare. Sometimes his hand would tighten on hers, just for a moment, and Jane Ann would know that no matter what they said, somewhere inside him, where that faint and desperate spark of life still survived, there was an awareness of her, of her closeness.

At the hospital there was neither night nor day, or even names for the days of the week — only the suspension of all time as she held his hand and watched him breathe, watched the bruised stillness of his face and tried to make her own vitality flow into him.

Husband. Strange, dear word, a love-rhyme word, somehow, matching the homely things — scent of shaving lotion, old hat he wouldn’t throw away, look of his hand lifting the morning coffee cup, and his smile upside down when things were awry. Widow. A hollow word, like some dried thing struck and echoing only emptiness, or the winter-wind sound around the eaves of a lonely house.

She willed her life force into that dear, lanky, smashed body, past all the tubes and dressings, past the waxy and motionless flesh down to the small flicker of life. Live! she demanded. Live because you are me and you are all there is for me forevermore. Live, Johnny! Cling to life!

In the nightmare week she was glad that her sister had been able to come and stay, to look after the house and the three children. Irene was her only unmarried sister, a teacher in a nearby city. The school year had just ended. But all the business of house and children and routine was out of focus for Jane Ann. Everything was concentrated in that hospital room in a fierce and silent battle.

On the sixth day he had a few momentary returns to semiconsciousness. His mouth moved. His eyelids fluttered. Once he made a small, lost, heartbreaking sound.

On the seventh day, in the gold-and-blue dusk of a day in late June, she was with him when he opened his eyes, which were utterly blank. She moved closer. The gray eyes looked toward her and focused on her with a slow awareness. And then there was a puzzled look. He moistened cracked lips. She had to lean close to hear him.

“What happened?” he whispered.

Joy twisted her heart. The quick welling of tears blurred her vision. She kissed his dry mouth lightly.

“Everything is all right, darling. Everything is fine.”

“But... where...”

“The hospital, darling. You had an accident with the car. You’re going to be all right.”

“Accident?”

“Rest now, darling. There’s no need to worry about anything. Just get well so you can come home.”

He drifted into sleep. She stood up then and went to the window and looked out at the June evening, and it was like her first look at the world. She stretched her body and knew how exhausted she was. But now the tiredness was good. She waited, and when the doctor made evening rounds she reported the awareness and the conversation.

The doctor was obviously pleased. He was young enough to enjoy the taste of the technical phrases on his tongue, the emergency surgery at three in the morning when Johnny had been brought in — opening the skull, relieving the pressure of massive clot and hemorrhage, and then, when it seemed Johnny had survived that, at least temporarily, turning his attention to the other injuries.

Astonishingly, at least to the young doctor, it now seemed that John Foley, husband of Jane Ann, would make a complete recovery. Remarkable powers of recuperation. Severe shock. Touch and go. She smiled at the young surgeon and nodded at his every word.

When she went out to the hospital parking lot and got into Irene’s car to drive home there was a sudden reaction she had not expected. She clenched the wheel so tightly her hands and shoulders ached. The tears spilled. It was like the momentary shadow of what could have been. After a long time she was able to drive slowly home.

And then, with the greatest disaster avoided so narrowly, she could begin to face this second one, product of the same accident — the disaster of shame and scandal, which could smash all their plans and all their hopes.

Jane Ann made one more visit to the hospital that night. Johnny had awakened again, to enough discomfort to warrant additional sedation, so there had been no further chance to talk. When she returned home at ten thirty her sister told her that the two older children had been hard to control, and that she had got them to bed only after great difficulty.

Jane Ann knew the cause of that. Aged four, seven and nine, the children had been unable to comprehend truly what the death of their father would mean. But they had been all too aware of the torment and tension of this past week, of the hint of disaster. They were attuned to her own emotional state, and now when they sensed that the blackness was gone and their mother was more nearly herself, they responded in wild and manic ways, straining the patience of their Aunt Irene. It was the naughtiness of celebration, of thanksgiving.

Now that she knew Johnny would live, the house had a different flavor for Jane Ann. During all the days of uncertainty, the house had become strange to her. The places he sat, his empty bed, his clothing in the closet, a book he had been reading, his hairbrush — all these things had had a strange flavor, ominous and brooding and forlorn, the terrible flavor of what-if-he-never-comes-home.

A thousand things to break her heart, over and over.

In the black week she had tried never to think of such a possibility, but she had been unable to keep all the ordinary things from becoming strange and somber. She had suspected that perhaps it was a mechanism of defense, to have the look of things change slowly rather than all at once — a small and dreadful preparation for the heart.

But now on this night the shadows had lifted from familiar things, and once again they were dear and ordinary. She wanted to run laughing through the house and touch everything, hold everything, look at everything. Johnny would sit in the chair, sleep in the bed, wear the clothes. The ground was solid again.

One day something would happen to one of them, she knew, and for the other this change of all the ordinary things would occur. But not this way. Not so soon. Not when no one was ready in any sense.

How can you ever know in advance, she thought, how intense and how true and how total a marriage can be?

It amazed her to remember that when she first met John Foley she had thought him stuffy and stubborn and ludicrously idealistic. It had been a student-government thing. She was a very popular girl — pretty, vital, friendly, energetic. She had been going with a boy as well known on the campus as she was. The boy was turned in for an infraction of the honor system, and the case was turned over to the student council for appropriate discipline. Both she and John Foley were on the nine-member council. She had not been particularly aware of him. He never said very much in the meetings. She was certain that she could swing the meeting and get Mitch off with a minor reprimand, and she told him so.

But the meeting had not gone the way she expected. For once, John Foley spoke up, unexpectedly persuasive and articulate. When she realized he was winning, she swung her waning influence toward a motion to table the matter for one week, knowing she could talk to John Foley privately and get him to take it easier on Mitch.

They had coffee together, and she ran into a determination she had not anticipated. He listened mildly and politely to her defense of Mitch, the extenuating circumstances, all of it.

And then he said, “This is not a personal vendetta against your friend Mitch. And I am not a prude or a fanatic, Jane Ann. But you know and I know that if this were Joe Nowhere instead of Big Mitch, we would have handled it in five minutes and Joe would be packing his bags and taking a one-semester suspension.”

She had carefully planned how to say it. “College is supposed to be preparation for life, right?”

“That’s what they keep telling us.”

“Then, isn’t it true, Johnny, that in the everyday world people like Mitch, because they do so many things so well, earn the right to get off with a reprimand, and the Joe Nowheres get it in the neck? Because we’re in college, do we have to be idealistic and unrealistic?”

He looked at her strangely. “Do you really believe that?”

“Of course!” she said, too vehemently.

He shook his head. “Then call me a fanatic. That’s not my kind of morality. That’s pragmatic morality — if it works, use it... I’m applying to your Mitch the same standards I use on myself, Jane Ann, right here and later on. Anything you have to cheat to get isn’t worth having, because you diminish yourself.”

“You certainly take yourself seriously!”

He leaned back and grinned at her, infuriatingly complacent, and said, “Woman, I’m the only thing I’ve got.” She tried three other times that week and could not move him, and went almost tearfully to Mitch and confessed failure. But Mitch gave her a sleepy smile and a little pat and said, “So go charm the jerk, sweetie. Use the girl tools. Flap those eyelashes.”

She stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“Baby, the way to win is to win. Once it’s in the record books, who cares how?”

It was a voice vote at the meeting. When it came her turn she looked directly at John Foley, directly into his unreadable gray eyes. She hesitated for several seconds. “I vote for suspension,” she said in a small voice — and saw his small nod, as though he had known all along.

When the meeting was adjourned, the vote unanimous, he caught up with her in the corridor. “Now what happens to our little discussion group?” he asked.

She stopped and looked at him. A gangling guy, trying to seem confident but actually ill at ease with her. Gray eyes uneasy in their appeal. And suddenly she had a strange sensation, as though her waiting heart had opened. He was suddenly dear. Her cheeks felt hot.

“I guess we make up a new agenda,” she said...

Now, back from the hospital, surrounded by the artifacts of love, eased of the fear of his death, she had a luxurious expectation of sleep for the first time since the call had come from the hospital.

She went to the kitchen and fixed tea and toast for herself and for Irene, humming to herself as she worked.

They sat, and she told Irene about the last visit, about what the night nurse had said, about how they were going to start to feed him orally, with broth and maybe some juice.

Then Irene reported the small happenings of the day.

“Who is Tom Haskell?” Irene asked.

“A good friend. And I guess you could call him our lawyer. The few things we’ve had, we’ve gone to him.”

“He phoned at eight thirty. He’d heard Johnny was out of danger, and he asked when he could talk to you.”

“I guess I’d better phone him tomorrow. And find out about the car insurance. And talk to Don at the office. All those things.” She yawned and stretched and ran her fingers back into her auburn-gold hair, and grinned at her sister. “The business of living again, Irene. The business of caring about the odds and ends. Thank God for that.”

“Do you think it’s going to be easy?”

Jane Ann stared at her. “You sound angry.”

“I’m not angry. Maybe I’m a little impatient with you, dear.” Irene was a tall, handsome woman in her middle thirties. She was tailored and immaculate, with the bloodless look of a person who sees a thousand things that warrant his disapproval.

“Impatient because I haven’t been charging around seeing lawyers and insurance people? For goodness sake, Irene, I’ve been spending every minute with—”

“I understand. I don’t mean that. I mean you don’t seem to comprehend the seriousness of what’s happened.”

Jane Ann stared at her. “Are you out of your mind?”

“My dear, the state police are charging Johnny with reckless driving, with not having his car under control and driving while under the influence of alcohol. He went to a cheap highway bar and picked up a cheap woman and killed her when he smashed the car. That woman’s family is going to sue. And you certainly do not have enough liability insurance to cover it.”

“Now, wait a minute!”

“Jane Ann, I know a little bit about how these things work. Do you think he still has his job to go back to?”

“So you’re condemning him, just like that silly newspaper did! Really, Irene! Johnny hasn’t had a chance to explain anything.”

Irene’s smile was thin and cool. “Do you think there’ll be very much to explain? Husbands do get drunk, and they do pick up women, and some of them have very bad luck. That’s the way the world is, my dear. I admire your bravery and I admire your loyalty, but I think you would be a great deal better off if you faced facts.”

“Irene,” Jane Ann said after a pause, “I am so grateful you could come here. I just don’t know what I would have done without you. And I do not think I can get along without you this summer. But I love Johnny and I trust him. I do not believe it happened the way everybody seems to think it happened. Johnny just isn’t that sort of man. Until he can explain just what did happen I am not going to have anyone, not even you, sit here and say bad things about him.”

“If he was only fifty miles away, why didn’t he come home when the day was over, and go back the next morning if he hadn’t finished his business?”

“That’s the sort of thing I mean. You just cannot say things like that in our house, Irene. I’d rather try to manage without your help.”

“Are you challenging me, dear?”

“Believe me, I’m just telling you how it has to be.”

Irene nodded. “Just as long as you understand my motive. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I’m trying to keep you from... being too badly hurt, that’s all.”

“If Johnny had died, people would go right on believing something that can’t possibly be true.”

“I won’t say another word, Jane Ann. Just remember, I’m standing by you no matter what.”

Jane Ann Foley made an appointment with Tom Haskell. She stopped at his office in the early afternoon of the following day. Tom was a pleasant, pink-and-white man with thinning blond hair and a small, plump smile. He expressed pleasure that Johnny was going to recover. He made social small talk for a little while and then looked unexpectedly serious and said, “I wouldn’t want you to think I was chasing ambulances, Jane Ann. Actually it isn’t the sort of problem a lawyer is going to go looking for, but you folks are going to need help. I’ve been telling people I represent John Foley. Do I have that authorization?”

“Of course.”

“I talked to Lester Maynard.”

“Oh, about the insurance?”

“Yes. The collision thing is easy enough. The car was a total loss. The salvage bid is two hundred dollars. I think we can accept that. The check will come to... I’ve got the figures here somewhere... sixteen hundred and ten dollars. The time-payment contract can be closed out for seven twenty-one thirty-three, leaving you eight eighty-eight sixty-seven. Lester says it will be all right if you sign this. The check will come made out to Johnny, but you can deposit it in your joint checking account. Lester has the personal things that were in the car, and he’ll drop them off at your house.”

“It seems so strange to be without a car. Tom.”

“Can you get along without one for a while?”

“Oh, yes. I’m using Irene’s.”

“Irene?”

“My sister. She’s staying with me. Irene Sherman.”

“The one I talked to. Yes. It’s the other aspect of the insurance, the liability angle, that’s going to give us fits. Johnny just wasn’t carrying enough, Jane Ann. Ten and twenty. That’s an absolute minimum. Ten thousand for each person, twenty thousand for each accident. Lester thinks, and so do I, that the insurance company will make no attempt to defend this one. They’ll just take their ten-thousand-dollar loss and call it a day.”

“What do you mean?”

“The woman’s husband is going to bring suit. She was twenty-four. There’s a child. In these actions they usually base damages on life expectancy, so much a year for her services as homemaker and mother and so on. It’s hard to guess what a jury will do, but certainly any judgment would be way over ten thousand. The husband will bring a civil action. The police report establishes the blame pretty clearly. It will be at least two years before it can be scheduled, but — well, the woman is dead. I’ll defend as well as I can. I’ll try to keep the judgment as low as I can, but that will depend on finding some way to bring out that she — well, she wasn’t exactly a savory character. Whatever the insurance doesn’t cover, you and Johnny are going to have to pay off.”

“I just don’t understand all this — believe me — I don’t. You just sit there, Tom, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, and you have Johnny all written off before you could possibly have heard his side of it.”

He looked indignant. “But Lester made his investigation. And I went up there three days ago and poked around. And I’ve seen the accident report the troopers made out. It’s open-and-shut, Jane Ann.”

“Not to me, it isn’t.”

“Now I don’t understand you, Jane Ann.”

“Johnny drove up there to Hartsville to see a Mr. T. J. Arlington. He was up there once before to see him too. He thought he’d be home in the evening. He phoned me at five o’clock from Mr. Arlington’s office. He sounded sort of rueful and annoyed. He said they had some more figures to go over, and Mr. Arlington wanted to show him one more tract of land in the morning and wanted to take him out to dinner when they finished in the office. It was a horrible night, Tom. Foggy and raining, and you know how miserable that road is, two-lane asphalt and all those curves and hills. So he said he thought he would buy a toothbrush and hole up in the Village Motel, and would I please phone Don in the morning and tell him. He said he thought he could probably take a look at the tract and be on the road by nine thirty the next morning. Those are facts too, Tom. I know he did work later in that office, and he did have dinner with Mr. Arlington, and he did get a room in the Village Motel.”

Tom Haskell leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips, his expression troubled. “I don’t want to argue with you. Believe me, I’m not trying to condemn Johnny for anything. I’m his lawyer. And I have to go along with what has been shown to be true. He was in a roadside joint called the Mountaineer until one in the morning, and he left there with the Mannix woman and drove away with her. He had been drinking. He drove south with her, and wrecked the car seventeen miles this side of Hartsville, killing Shirley Mannix and coming very, very close to killing himself. From the skid marks they estimate he was going between seventy and eighty when he hit that curve.”

She stared at him. “Do you know what you do? You speak about Johnny as if he were some other kind of man. He never drinks very much, and when he has his two or sometimes three drinks, he never shows it. And he’s twice as careful in the car when he’s had a drink. I just don’t see how you can act as if you have it all figured out when you haven’t even heard Johnny’s side of it yet.”

He nodded. “That’s certainly fair enough. I am going to talk to Johnny, of course. And I’m going to help in every way I can. What I want you to understand, though, is that I don’t see what Johnny can say that is going to make very much difference one way or the other.”

“Tom, all I ask is that you listen to him with an open mind. Don’t condemn him in advance.”

He smiled at her and shook his head and said, “Now I know what they mean by savage loyalty.”

“I’m Johnny’s wife. But I didn’t mean to sound savage.”

The talk with Tom Haskell distressed her. In another context, it all seemed too much like the sneery little hints in the newspaper account of the fatal accident. Married man with somebody else’s wife.

And his remark about savage loyalty stayed with her. He had looked at her as if he meant stupid rather than savage. But how could you explain the very personal and very private things to a casual friend like Tom Haskell?

Like that dreadful occasion that Johnny had mockingly called the “Affair of the Merry Widow”...

Her morale hadn’t been very good. Tess was five then, and Linda three, and Jane Ann was seven months pregnant with Skipper. She had trouble controlling her weight, and she was nauseated as she had never been when she was carrying the girls. It seemed to her the longest nine months in all of history. Taking care of the house and the girls in that condition left her depressed and exhausted. And vulnerable. To make matters worse, Johnny was working long hours on a special project. The company had made extensive loans to a contractor, he explained. The man had died suddenly and left things in a tangle. He was working to get things straightened out to the point where the contracting firm could fulfill its obligations and pay off on the loans. Many nights he would not be home until after midnight.

The phone calls were what started the insecurity. She would answer, and there would be silence and then a click as someone hung up. She kept thinking about those phone calls, but said nothing about them, and began to look for other clues. Was this not the traditional time for infidelity-seventh year of marriage?

And then there was the new shirt. One of his good ones disappeared, and there was a new one in the laundry. So he had worn one out of the house and come home wearing a different one. But why? Lipstick? And then a bobby pin on the floor of the car.

She had not wanted to look for such things, or think about them. But they kept happening. The sickening little clues, like the envelope she found in his topcoat pocket. Small, blue, scented, tom open, empty, with his first name written on the outside of it in a dainty script.

He came home at eleven one evening. She sat in the living room. He seemed tired. He did not have much to say about his day, and he did not seem to be interested in what kind of day she had had.

It was all too much, and she held herself stiffly and said, “I think it’s time you told me about her.”

He stared at her. “What?”

“Who is she. Johnny? How much does she mean to you?”

His expression was odd. She tried to read guilt into it but could not. He took her hand.

“Don’t you even know who I am?” he asked her gently.

“I... I thought I did.”

“I don’t know what started all this, Jane Ann, but that isn’t as important as what could make it start. It would have to be partly my fault, I guess. I’m trying not to be full of outraged indignation. Wounded innocence.” He frowned. “What part of our marriage is so bad that I would have to go looking for something to make up for it?”

“I didn’t think...”

“I love you. There’s nothing I have to prove. I love you, and God knows I don’t feel deprived. You are about seven or eight women, all earthy.”

“Except now I—”

“Hush. You don’t feel very good, I know, but you look lush and abundant and marvelous. Honey, jealousy is a dreadful disease. It eats people. Let’s just say I am worthy of your trust. Now and forever. Now, what in the world started you off on this?”

The explanations made her feel ashamed, but it was true that it was in part his fault. He was being pursued by the widow of the man whose business affairs he was trying to straighten out. He had spoken to Don Jennsen about it; Don had suggested that he depend on fast footwork until the job was done, because if she became offended, it would increase their chance of loss. Johnny’s mistake had been in not telling Jane Ann about it. Normally he would have, but he had thought that it might worry her. He had been trying politely, deftly to discourage the woman. The envelope was from a note she had left for him at the construction office. He had ruined a shirt while inspecting a piece of heavy equipment and had merely forgotten to mention it. He had taken several calls from the woman at home, about business matters. Certainly Jane Ann remembered those. He could not explain why she would hang up without identifying herself when Jane Ann answered. And he suggested that the black bobby pin might belong to one of her friends rather than one of his.

It was settled then, in tears and laughter and forgiveness.

But when it was all over, he had looked at her and said, “Never again, promise.”

“Promise?”

“Don’t have mealy little thoughts like that. Don’t imagine things. In the corniest possible sense of the term, honey, I am forever true. I admit to being a girl-watcher. And I am so astoundingly handsome, stray women keep knocking me down in the street. But you are all I need and all I want. That’s the way it is. You’re stuck with me. If something worries you, ask.”

“I promise.”

But you couldn’t explain all of that to Tom Haskell and say it was the only small time of doubt and there would never be another.

On the following morning she went to the office. The company specialized in financing heavy-construction contracts, making loans to building contractors and following up with management advice. Johnny covered a wide area in his work. Since she had no appointment, she spent fifteen minutes waiting outside Don Jennsen’s office. At last the secretary ushered her in, and Don came around his big desk and took her by the hands and said, “A terrible thing, Jane Ann. I know just what an ordeal this has been for you. Believe me, if there is anything at all I can do, I stand ready.” He was a huge, florid man with a heavy crop of prematurely white hair.

“I don’t really know how soon he can have visitors, Don. It will be at least another week. And Dr. McAndrews says it will be about a month before I can bring him home, and probably another month after that before he can begin working even part time. That’s mostly because of his left leg. It got broken pretty badly.” She shrugged and smiled. “But just to have him alive...”

“The hospitalization policy should help quite a bit.”

“Oh, yes. And he had accident insurance too, Don, that will cover what the hospitalization doesn’t cover. And provide something while he’s laid up. I really don’t know how you want to work that out. I don’t know what happens to people’s pay when they are laid up so long.”

Don nodded. “I am really delighted to hear about that accident policy, Jane Ann. They can be very handy things to have.”

“You know how Johnny is. I just know that in a few days he’s going to start worrying about his work and all, and I thought you could tell me what to tell him.”

“He left things in apple-pie order — except for the Arlington report, of course. He might be interested to know that on the basis of further investigation since his accident, we’re going along with T. J. Arlington for about seventy per cent of the total line of credit he requested. I imagine that comes pretty close to what Johnny would have advised. As to the rest of it, I think I can safely say that the board will go along with me in making the cutoff point October first. It is a small recognition of the caliber of work John Foley did. And tell him that I shall have the retirement account computed as of October first, and he can draw it in a lump sum if he so wishes — everything he contributed plus six per cent interest computed annually over the life of the retirement account.”

She stared at him. “Cutoff point? Lump sum?”

Don shook his big head sadly and made a gesture of resignation. “That’s one of the penalties of being in a field of endeavor that has fiduciary overtones. Public responsibility. We have to be like Caesar’s wife, Jane Ann This publicity was rather unfortunate, you know.”

“You mean you’re firing him? After eleven years?”

“My hands are tied. Johnny would be the first to agree, I assure you. Men in this line of work know that they just can’t—”

“Mr. Jennsen, this is the most stinking thing I ever heard of in my whole life!”

His big face darkened. “I would advise you to—”

“Without a chance to explain himself! What kind of fairness is that?”

“Obviously you do not understand the situation. We depend on public trust, public confidence, Mrs. Foley. There are police charges against your husband. They may be contemplating a manslaughter charge. This is a financial institution. Speaking solely for myself, I am going to try to help him locate something else because he is a very able man. I admit that. But we just can’t—”

“You just can’t understand the basic human decency of giving a man a chance to explain himself,” she said, getting angrily to her feet.

He stood up slowly. “Good day, Mrs. Foley.”

She had the office door partly opened when he said, “Jane Ann?”

She turned and waited for him to come to her.

He touched her shoulder awkwardly and she shrugged his hand away. “You have a lot of spirit,” he said. “I admire that. I shouldn’t have got cross with you. Believe me, when Johnny is ready to discuss this, you ask him about it and see what he says. This is a highly sensitive profession.”

“And you scare awfully easy.”

“If I fought with all the influence I have to keep him on, it would do absolutely no good.”

“So why risk anything for Johnny?”

“You are a very difficult woman, Jane Ann.”

“I am not going to let you do this to him.”

“I am afraid there is nothing you can do about it. Spirit is commendable, but don’t wear yourself out fighting stone walls, my dear. I repeat, if there is anything I can do, please let me know.”...

Late on the tenth day, the first Friday in July, at four thirty in the afternoon, Johnny woke up and looked at her with the most awareness he had yet displayed.

“Accident, eh?” he said. He frowned. “The kids okay?”

“They’re just fine, darling.”

“Day before yesterday?”

“It was ten days ago, Johnny. You were badly hurt. But you are going to be one hundred per cent fine.”

His eyes looked startled and troubled. “Ten days!”

“You drove up to see Mr. Arlington. Remember? You drove up to Hartsville.”

“Arlington?” he said blankly.

“Don’t you remember going up to see him?”

“I... I know I was scheduled to. Did I go?”

“Yes, dear.”

“But I didn’t get there. Bad road.”

“You got there, dear. You saw him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Really. You phoned me from his office... We’ll talk about it later.”

His long fingers tightened on her hand. He looked at her with the troubled earnestness of one of her children and said, “I hurt. I hurt pretty bad right now.”

She got the floor nurse. They gave him a sedative, and within five minutes he drifted back into sleep.

Dr. Ferris McAndrews was an exceptionally grave young man with somber, deep-set eyes and huge, pale hands.

“Yes,” he said absently. “Yes, of course. Traumatic amnesia. Typical of head injuries. It extends backward from the moment of trauma. They remember more as time goes on.”

“And finally remember everything?”

“I did not say that, Mrs. Foley. Some of them do. Some of them don’t. Is it important?”

“It could be very important. How long do I have to wait to find out?”

“I really couldn’t say. A few weeks, months, even years sometimes.”

“I wish you would be more specific.”

“I wish I could be, Mrs. Foley. These mental side effects are never completely predictable.”

She glowered at him. “What if you had to find out and he couldn’t remember?”

He shrugged mildly. “I suppose, when he’s strong enough, there are some things worth trying. Hypnosis, if he’s a good subject. I’ll look into it.”

By the following Tuesday, Johnny’s improvement was dramatic. He could remember more of it — seeing Arlington, phoning her, renting the motel room. There was a vague memory of having dinner with Arlington at the Log Cabin, but that was all.

Her chair was close to his bed. The head of the bed had been rolled up so that he was almost in a sitting position. She held his hand, and he looked at her and said, “You’d better tell me what’s going on, Jane Ann.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t kid me, honey. I had an accident. You’ve been anxious to find out how much I remember. You’d better tell me all of it.”

“Not just yet, Johnny.”

He gave her a tired smile. “It’d better be now, because something keeps going around and around in my head, and now I’m at the point where not knowing is maybe worse than knowing. A nurse out in the hall was saying something about me, about me and the accident. She said the woman was killed. What woman? Tell me, honey.”

“I don’t know all of it. But I... I can tell you what I do know.”

She told him. She tried to temper it, but the ugly edges of the known facts poked out through the softer fabric of her voice. In the middle of it he scowled and closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, in agony or in disbelief. When she was finished he opened his eyes and looked toward her and said. “It’s something you read in a paper, happening to somebody else.”

“Does her name mean anything? Shirley Mannix?”

“Nothing definite. It has a very slight familiarity, as if I’d known it a long time ago. I can’t put a face to it.”

“And the place called the Mountaineer?”

“Oh, I’m sure I’ve seen that place. It’s about three miles this side of Hartsville. I’ve seen it but I’ve never been in it.” He tried to smile. “That’s not exactly right, is it? Apparently I have been in it.”

“They say you were there, dear.”

“And people actually saw me leave with that woman?”

“Yes.”

He put his forearm across his eyes. “What is it drunks say? I hope I had a good time?”

“You’ll have to remember what really happened.”

“Maybe it will be just as well if I can’t.”

She reached out and took his arm away from his eyes. “Johnny, don’t say things like that. You mustn’t.”

“A date with Shirley Mannix.”

“Not the way it sounds! Not the way they’re trying to make it sound, Johnny! Don’t say it and don’t think it. When you remember, we’ll know what happened.”

He freed his hand and touched her cheek with his fingertips. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Johnny, can I give you all the rest of the bad news?”

“Remember the man who was so kindhearted that he docked his little dog’s tail a piece at a time?” He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his hospital gown.

She told him about the suit, about what Tom Haskell had told her and what Lester Maynard thought the insurance company would do.

“That makes a nice golden future,” he said bitterly. “Lester was after me to bump it to twenty-forty. But I economized.”

“You sound as if the suit were lost!”

“But if I killed — if that woman was k—” His gray eyes went wide and shocked, as if he seemed to realize for the first time the implication of having been responsible for the death of someone. He put his hand over his eyes. “Dear Lord,” he whispered.

She looked at him for a long moment and then said, “You might as well have all of it right now.” Angrily, bitterly, she told him about Don Jennsen and his decision.

“Don’t be too rough on Don, Jane Ann. He has to handle it this way. Man gets drunk, smashes his car, kills a woman, he’s a liability.”

“But he just assumes that’s what happened!”

“What else can anybody assume?”

She stared at him. “What do I have to do? I fight everybody in the world. Do I have to fight you too?”

Suddenly all of it was too much. She bent and buried her face against the bed, muffling the raw sobs.

He stroked her hair and made soothing sounds. “You’ve had this to handle all by yourself,” he said.

She straightened up. “I’m t-tough enough, darling. More than you know.”

His eyes were grave and steady. “And what if it turns out to be just what it looks like?”

“But it isn’t!”

“What if?” he insisted.

“Maybe I can be tough enough for that too. I don’t know. I just don’t know, Johnny.”

At eleven that night in the quiet kitchen she said to Irene, after a long silence, “I’m going up there.”

“What, dear?”

“To Hartsville. He can’t remember. Maybe he won’t ever remember. But maybe somebody else will.”

“But it has been investigated, Jane Ann.”

She made a face. “Yes. By experts. State police, lawyers, insurance people. And we read about it in the paper, didn’t we? If you can get along without the car. I’ll go early tomorrow. And keep going back until I find out what this was all about.”

“You’re welcome to the car, of course, but I think this is a mistake. What can you tell those people?”

“It’s what they can tell me.”

It was a misty, overcast day, cool in the hill country. Vacation traffic was heavy on the narrow, winding road. The accident had happened three miles north of the village of Dowellburg. There was a state police barracks within the village limits, consisting of a headquarters cottage, a large garage and a radio tower. The man in charge remembered that Trooper Vernon Gyce had handled that particular accident. Gyce was out on routine patrol. She asked if she could see their file copy of the report. He said he could not let unauthorized persons see official reports. She asked if being the wife of the driver of the car gave her any kind of authorization. He said he was sorry, but that’s the way things were. And so she waited, sitting in a chair by a window, turning the pages of old magazines.

“He won’t come off shift until four in the afternoon. Mrs. Foley.” the man said after a while.

She smiled up at him. “I’ll wait, thank you.” She looked back at her magazine.

Forty minutes later he came over to her again and said, “I ordered Gyce to come in and talk to you. He’ll be here in maybe twenty minutes.”

“I’m very grateful to you.”

He flushed and said. “Just don’t take up too much of his time.”

Trooper Vernon Gyce was very tall, tanned and broad-shouldered. He came in, creaking and glittering and clinking, and muttered to the man in charge for a few moments. Then he took off his hat and came over and sat in the neighboring chair.

“I’m Trooper Gyce.” he said. “Is there any way I may be of assistance to you, ma’am?”

“Well, I thought that if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, you might show me where it happened and sort of... explain it to me. It isn’t far from here. I understand.”

Gyce went back and murmured for a time to the man in charge, and a few minutes later she was beside him in the gold-and-gray sedan, rolling north out of the village.

“What happened. A trucker reported it at about one thirty. A lumber truck. He saw the car lights. They were still on. Maybe cars went by and didn’t see the lights, but he sits high. He pulled off and set his blinkers and walked back. Then he ran back to the truck and came right to the barracks in Dowellburg. The ambulance was called over from Dain City, eight miles west, and when they saw it was a bad head injury — Doc Greer was there by then too — it made the most sense to run him right down to the city. I radioed ahead so they’d know what was coming in. Here we are.” He pulled off the road. She got out with him and they walked up the shoulder of the road.

He stopped after about a hundred feet and turned and pointed back the way they had come. “What you’ve got is a big curve to the right. He started to lay the rubber down right here. From a measurement taking in the vehicle weight, grade, surface and climate conditions, we can come close to figuring speed. Call it seventy-five.”

He walked back along the shoulder. Vacation cars went by, churning the damp air. “Rubber stays on the road a long time,” he said. “You can see how he got carried over into the wrong lane and almost made it. Right here he went off onto the shoulder and it was soft. He ripped up the dirt and grass. It tipped the car over.”

He angled down the slope, pointing out gouges in the soil. “He came bouncing and rolling down here, sideways and maybe end over end. The doors sprang open and the woman was thrown out. She landed about here and the car rolled over her. There was never any doubt about her.”

Jane Ann shuddered and followed him toward the trees. “The man — your husband, he was about here, thrown out later, and the car stopped right here, right side up. This tree stopped it.” He sat on his heels and pointed to a raw gouge in the trunk of a big maple, a gouge about a foot above ground level.

“Could the woman have been driving. Officer?”

He looked up at her and came slowly to his feet. “No way to prove that one way or the other, Mrs. Foley. In the absence of proof, the law assumes the owner was operating the vehicle.”

“And the law assumes he was drunk?”

“Stan Stack at the Mountaineer said Mr. Foley had at least three drinks, and no sober man would come into this corner at that speed, Mrs. Foley. And as for the woman’s driving at that speed, she didn’t drink.”

“Did you know her. Officer?”

Surprisingly. Vernon Gyce blushed — suddenly and violently — and looked away and said, “I know who she was.”

It brought a more personal element into their conversation. When he looked at her again, his dark eyes were changed. There was a male awareness in them. It seemed to her a strange and unpleasant place in which to be found attractive. She knew that he was wondering about her, wondering how vulnerable an attractive wife was after her husband smashed himself up while hacking around after the local floozy. In the silence a long string of holiday cars went by on the road.

“You see,” she said. “I have to understand how this could have happened.”

“We get a lot of one-car accidents along this stretch. They push it too much and lose control.”

“I mean I have to understand why he was with Mrs. Mannix, and where he was going with her.”

“I guess I can’t help you there.”

“Maybe you can help me more than you realize. I assume that Mrs. Mannix was... had a bad reputation.”

“I wouldn’t want to say anything like that.”

“Officer, was she the sort of woman who would have gone to a motel with my husband?”

Gyce blushed again. “I guess you could say that.”

“Then, doesn’t it seem strange to you, or to anyone, that they should leave the Mountaineer together and come miles and miles down this road, when my husband already had a motel room in Hartsville?”

“Maybe she wanted to go for a ride and wanted to go fast — egging him on, sort of. She was crazy-acting. She didn’t have to drink to be drunk. She did a lot of weird things. You could never know what Shirl wanted to do next. She could be laughing and all, and suddenly take a dislike to you and cuss you out and walk off.”

“Couldn’t her husband control her?”

“He works off in the woods a lot. He didn’t know what happened until two days after. They live maybe half a mile from the Mountaineer. She married Ross Mannix when she was sixteen. Their kid is seven years old now. Once he was settled down for the night, and Ross away, she’d walk on down to the bar at the Mountaineer.”

“You seem to know a lot about her.”

“I was in Hartsville a year, then here for the last two. Work out the winters in these places where there aren’t many people, and you get to know them. Ross used to thrash her when she’d get out of line, but not lately.”

“What did she look like?”

“Well, small, and sort of Spanish- or Italian-looking. Dark, and a little on the chubby side. Bright clothes and a lot of bracelets and stuff like that. And a big, deep, loud laugh that surprised people.”

“I’m afraid I’m taking up too much of your time.”

“I should be getting back on tour, Mrs. Foley.”

“What if I want to ask you something else?”

“From four to four thirty I’ll be at the barracks. You can phone there if you want.”

They climbed the slope to the road and walked across to the sedan. He swung it around and headed back to the barracks, where Irene’s car was parked.

“Please think about something else, because maybe I’ll want to ask you about it,” she said. “My husband and I have used seat belts for so long that we latch them without thinking about them every time we get into the car. When people ride with either of us, we make them use the belts. But they were both thrown from the car.”

“I looked that car over. The belts weren’t used.”

“Don’t you think the whole story is strange?”

“What does your husband say, Mrs. Foley?”

“He can’t remember.”

The trooper’s mild smile was ironic as he let her out by her car.

She drove back and stopped at the same place and went down the slope by herself. She wanted to see it again, without the distracting presence of Trooper Gyce.

Suppose the accident had torn the wiring loose? Then the lights would have been off. The driver of the lumber truck would not have stopped. And Johnny would have died, right here, alone, before dawn came. Life seemed almost too precarious to her at that moment. Too chancy, too dependent on small things.

She touched the scarred trunk of the maple. In a few months the raw wood would heal itself. As she straightened up she saw a gleam of metal in the brush. She moved closer and saw that it was a hubcap. She crawled in and got it and brought it out. The look of it brought back the memory of the car — the day of choosing it, driving it home, the smell of newness. Johnny always teased her about the way she endowed pieces of equipment with personality characteristics — the surly refrigerator, the hysterical lawn mower, the smug coffeepot. The car had been a lady, quiet and slightly haughty. A horrid, clashing end for a lady who had always behaved so well... She took the hubcap back to Irene’s car and put it on the floor in the back. It would have seemed strangely thoughtless to leave it there, a poor return for gentle service.

She drove north toward Hartsville, anxious to see the one person who could probably tell her the most about that night when truth was turned upside down, when all the world began to relate strange lies about John Foley.

She found T. J. Arlington over at the north shore of Blind Rock Lake, supervising the construction of four lake-front cottages. He was a broad little man of about fifty, wearing khakis, work shoes and a red felt hat.

He talked to her by the tailgate of a muddy pickup truck while they drank coffee from a thermos jug out of plastic cups.

“I can truly say it came as a great shock to me, Mrs. Foley. I was with Johnny only a couple of times, but I can say that I came to like him. My problem, like he maybe told you, is developing a big-enough line of credit to finance the work I already got lined up. This area is opening up fast, and I had to go to the city for the kind of financing I need up here. I don’t believe in hiding business affairs from people with a right to know them, and I opened up all my files and records to John Foley. And as we went over everything, he made some mighty good suggestions about better ways of handling things, and I’m grateful to him for that. I mailed him a card to the hospital, and you tell him I hope he comes along good.”

“Mr. Arlington, Johnny can’t remember very much about that night. He can remember phoning me and going to dinner with you. If we could fill in the blanks, maybe we could understand what really happened.”

He gave her a quick, puzzled glance. “I guess it isn’t a mystery what happened, is it?”

“Johnny isn’t a drunk and he isn’t a chaser, Mr. Arlington.”

“Even the best man in the world can be a damn fool.”

“What did you and he do that evening?”

“Let me see, now. He left the office about six and drove up to the Village Motel and got himself a room, and I guess he bought some stuff like a toothbrush and comb, and so on. He was back in about twenty minutes and we worked until a little past eight thirty and then we walked catty-cornered across to the Log Cabin Restaurant and had us some dinner. Back to the office maybe about nine fifteen, and we finally finished up a little after ten. There was just one final thing he wanted to do, and that was to take a look at the tract I optioned over behind the lumber company; we were going to do that early the next morning. I felt like a drink after working all day, so I suggested we drive out to the Mountaineer, three miles south of town. On account of I live a couple miles beyond it and he would be coming back into town, we took both cars and he followed me out, and we parked around in back. We went in, and I guess I bought him one and then he bought me one, and we talked about the plans I’ve got for the future, and then I went on home.”

“Was Mrs. Mannix there then?”

“Yes.”

“Were there many people there?”

“Not many. It was a Tuesday night. Fifteen all told. I’d say. And Stan Stack behind the bar.”

“Did my husband talk to Mrs. Mannix while you were there?”

Arlington looked increasingly uncomfortable. “Look. Mrs. Foley, you’re a grown woman with three kids, so I guess the facts of life won’t surprise you too much. Shirley was floating around the place, laughing and talking to this one and that one, and drinking root beer and putting money in the jukebox, and sort of dancing all by herself. When she’d light at a table, she’d sit with the Marlow boys, Chick and Lew. They’re a no-good pair. They’re usually in trouble with the game warden. I hire one or the other of them sometimes, but only when I’m desperate for men. They give you a half-hour’s work for an hour’s pay. Well, it was obvious to me that Shirley had her eye on Johnny right from the moment we came in. She kept trying to make him notice her, laughing too loud and so forth. Then she’d sit with the Marlow boys and they’d talk low, and she’d stare over at Johnny and giggle. We were sitting at the bar. About fifteen minutes before I left, Johnny went to the men’s room. When he came back he had to walk past the jukebox. She was there, doing her little twist dance all by herself, and as he went by she whirled around and caught him by the wrist and pulled him close and said something to him. Then he said something to her and she smiled and said something else, and he came back to the bar and asked me about her.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him she was bad news. I guess every town has a young woman the church ladies like to talk about, and Shirley was the one for this town. Not an evil person, you understand. Just reckless and noisy and not giving a damn. He kept watching her, and she kept watching him while I told him about her.”

“Did you ask him what she said to him?”

“Not directly, but I gave him every chance to tell me, and he didn’t. She stomped around there to the music, her black hair flying, darting little grinning, sideways glances at Johnny. A very pretty young woman, and very happy. Pretty soon I said I had to be going on home. He said he thought he’d stay a little while. It looked to me like he was going to get mixed up with her in spite of what I’d said, and I wondered if I should say anything else, and then I decided it wasn’t any of my business.”

“Would you say he was drunk?”

“No, he wasn’t drunk. He was having Scotch and soda, tall, and Stan Stack has never given full measure in his life. I looked back through at the bar as I was going out the back way, and Stan was bringing him another drink and Shirley was just climbing onto the stool beside him.”

“What time did you leave, did you say?”

“Quarter after midnight. And they say he left with her about one o’clock — went roaring out of that parking lot in that car and turned south.”

“Do you think those Marlow brothers would know what she said to him?”

“If they did and they thought it would help anybody, they wouldn’t let on. Those two are just plain mean, Mrs. Foley. They stomped a boy bad last year, and should have been put away then, but there was nobody too anxious to testify against them.”

“Do you think Mr. Stack would talk to me?”

“Not if it was up to him. What you do, Mrs. Foley, you tell Stan that if he talks to you nice, I might get a crew over there to fix that roof by the end of the week. If not, there’s no telling when I can schedule it.”

She stared at him. “I couldn’t tell him something like that!”

“I guess you couldn’t. Tell you what. I’ll go up the road in a few minutes and give him a call. He’ll be nice by the time you get there.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Arlington.”

“Now, don’t you be too hard on Johnny, Mrs. Foley. I’d say he’s in enough trouble as it is. Ross Mannix has been telling folks that his lawyer says he’s going to get a big price for Shirley’s life. And the other fellow who came up here to ask the same questions Johnny asked told me that Johnny was no longer connected with the company.”

“Mr. Arlington, I have no intention of being hard on him, as you put it. Johnny isn’t a sneak and he isn’t a fool. I’ve always trusted him and I always will.”

Arlington looked startled. He smiled wryly and said. “I guess there isn’t a husband around who couldn’t do with a little of that kind of faith, Mrs. Foley.”

She had a sandwich at the Log Cabin and it was after three when she arrived at the Mountaineer. The cool, overcast day had filled the place with afternoon beer drinkers, most of them vacationers from the nearby public campground. The bartender directed her to where she could find Stan Stack. He was in a small office off the kitchen, operating an ancient adding machine. He cleared papers from a chair to give her a place to sit. He was a brown, beefy, powerful man, with drooping eyelids, a heavy, sensuous face and a black, hairline mustache.

He confirmed everything Arlington had told her. And he said, “I’ve got a license to protect. They ask me if he was drinking, I have to say yes. Three drinks. You understand that.”

“Of course.”

“But he was sober when he came in and sober when he left. I tell them that, and what does it mean to them? Nothing. A man had drinks and got into his car and killed somebody.”

“When did Shirley Mannix get here that night?”

He shrugged heavy shoulders. “I didn’t notice. Maybe nine. She came in alone, in the front door. One thing about her, she didn’t drink. She’s got a right to come in. Anybody has. Right? She was good for a laugh. She brightened the place up. Should I kick? Should I tell her she’s married, so stay home with the kid?”

“I’m not blaming you for anything, Mr. Stack.”

“Stan. You call me Stan like everybody, Mrs. Foley. What happened here that night, she got interested in your husband and so she picked him up, and they left together about one o’clock. About Shirley, she could come in here twenty times, maybe, arrive alone and leave alone, and the next time there would be somebody catch her eye and she would have a date. That’s the way she was. She wasn’t exactly a hooker — excuse the expression, Mrs. Foley. I mean, maybe she’d take presents or something; but it wasn’t any kind of business proposition, you know what I mean? I wouldn’t have anything going on like that in my place.”

“I understand.”

“She was sort of a nutty kid, Mrs. Foley. Ross just never could settle her down. Sometimes even when he was home, ten minutes after he’d fall asleep, she’d be dressed and on her way down the road. She liked a lot of people around, a lot of laughs and music. It’s hard to believe she got killed like that. She was real alive.”

“Wasn’t she with some brothers named Marlow that night?”

“She sat with them part of the while, yes.”

“Were they still here when she left with my husband?”

“No. They’d been gone a long time. I think they took off right after T. J. took off. In fact. I’m sure they did. I remember hearing that old truck of theirs go clattering out of the lot.”

“Were many people here when my husband left?”

“A half dozen, maybe.”

“And my husband drove right out with her?”

“Lady, he took off like a bat out of hell, excuse the expression. He sprayed gravel against the side of the building, and those tires really screamed when he came onto the highway and turned left.”

“After Mr. Arlington left, Shirley Mannix joined my husband at the bar. Is that right?”

“She sat with him forty, forty-five minutes or so, talking together, so quiet I couldn’t hear anything said. About one o’clock he picked up his change and left a good tip, and she grinned around and said, ‘Good night, all.’ and hung onto his arm and out they went.”

“He can’t remember any of that.”

“That’s what T. J. told me on the phone.”

“Thank you for answering all my questions. Mr. Stack.”

“Everybody just calls me Stan. Anything else you want to know, you come around anytime, but I guess we’ve about covered everything.”

“I appreciate your kindness.”

“I hardly remember anybody not dating Shirley once she put her mind to it. Until she began to get just a little bit heavy, she was the best-looking woman in the county. She liked things lively — playing tricks on people, laughing one minute and getting mad as a boiled owl the next minute... They say that car rolled across her and flattened her right into the ground.”

Jane Ann arrived back home at five thirty. She and Irene had dinner with the three children a little after six. Then, in spite of Skipper’s loud indignation, she put him to bed, while Linda and Tess went out to play in the yard in the long summer twilight. She got back to the kitchen in time to help Irene with the last of the dishes.

“You look exhausted,” Irene said.

“It was a long day.”

“Did you learn anything?” Irene asked.

“Nothing that will help very much. Johnny has to remember more. Just a little bit more.”

“I really don’t see how you could expect to accomplish anything. Not after experts went up there and found out what happened.”

Jane Ann whirled on her sister, her eyes ablaze. “Experts on what? Experts on Johnny? Experts on Johnny and me and what we have? I went there looking for the little things they’d miss, Irene.”

“You don’t have to shout at me, dear.”

“Why do you want me to give up on this? I did find a few little things that don’t quite fit. Would three weak drinks make Johnny scratch off in the car like some school kid? He always used the seat belt. The belts weren’t used. I learned just enough to know that I have to go back up there again. And look for more.”

Irene put her hands on Jane Ann’s shoulders. “I just don’t want you to be hurt.”

“I’m sorry, Irene. But I am hurt. It hurts to have anybody believe something that’s wrong. Can’t you understand that? It has to be wrong.”

“But everything points to—”

Jane Ann measured a tiny space with thumb and forefinger. “Maybe, before I went up there, there was one tiny little doubt this big, so tiny I didn’t even know I had any doubt at all. But now it’s gone, if it ever existed, Irene. It all just — just doesn’t feel right. Do you know what it was like to me? Like one of those plays where the lines aren’t quite right. So you can’t really believe what the actors say. They try to be very sincere and very plausible, but you just can’t quite believe them.”

“I guess I can’t stop you, can I?”

“Nobody can stop me, Irene. Nobody can stop us.”

“All I can do is wish you luck, then — love and luck.”

At the hospital she told him exactly what he had done that night, as far as she had been able to check it out, warning him not to confuse her account with any fragments of memory he could dredge up.

He held his clenched fist against his forehead and spoke slowly. “Yes. Yes, we did go back to the office. Wait. I can remember following his car, those red tail-lights in the rain.”

“And you parked behind the Mountaineer.”

After a few moments he shook his head. “The Mountaineer is a blank, honey. I was never there.”

She went off and borrowed pencil and paper, and came back and drew a rough sketch of the interior. “Here is the bar. The tables are over here. This is the rear hallway to the back door to the parking lot. Jukebox here.”

“Nothing,” he said forlornly.

She took a deep breath. “Let’s try the other kind of memories. Fifteen people there. They would be laughing and talking. Jukebox music, probably loud. A dark, plump, pretty young woman in bright clothes, wearing a lot of bracelets and probably a lot of perfume. A loud, deep laugh.”

He stared at her. “Dear Lord,” he whispered.

“What, darling? What is it?”

“That laugh. I can remember that laugh, in the night. Dark. Raining a little. I... I was kissing a girl. Quite short. Jane Ann, I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry.”

“Were you in the car kissing her?”

“No. Outdoors in the dark. By a door or something. A window, maybe. Jane Ann, I think we’d better quit all this.”

“No! Look at what I’ve drawn here. She was dancing alone in front of the jukebox. You were on one of these stools. You were looking at her. You were turned around looking at her and she was looking back at you.”

He closed his eyes. “Red pants,” he said. “Shiny red pants. And a red and white blouse, striped. And a red ribbon in her hair, but there were three different shades of red.” He frowned without opening his eyes. “Wooden floor, loud music. The drinks were weak. She said something to me. She asked me something.”

“But you can remember the Mountaineer now?”

“Not too clearly. In pieces, sort of.”

“She stopped you and asked you something. Can you remember?”

“I’m trying. I can almost see her face when she was asking me. I’ll keep trying to remember, honey. And... please forgive me.”

“For what?”

He stared at her, and then his eyes became shiny. “Stanch gal,” he said in a husky tone. “I’m not worth all that. I messed everything up.”

“Shut up, Johnny. Nothing about us is changed. Nothing about you and me is different in any way.”

Two days later she drove north into the hills once again, up into the country on a hot, bright July day, through the shady villages and along the lakes.

The Mannix place was down a dirt road a little distance south of the Mountaineer. It was a narrow, two-story frame building with small windows and a steep pitch of roof. Siding, weathered gray, had been applied to about half the house, and the rest was tar paper mended in a few places with rusting squares of sheet metal.

As she walked from the car toward the small front porch a face looked at her from one of the narrow windows, and then a fat, gray-faced woman in a faded print dress came out on the porch and stared down at her.

“There’s nobody to home,” the woman said.

“I wondered if Mr. Mannix was here.”

“I said he wasn’t. He’s off with a woods crew away north of Cary Lake. Won’t be back for two weeks anyhow. I’m just minding the place for him, miss. I’m second cousin to him. I can give him word somebody was here, you tell me what you want.”

“I was going to ask him about... Mrs. Mannix.”

“The judgment of the Lord come down on that woman better than two weeks back, miss.” She stopped suddenly and her eyes widened. “I heard the wife of the man that killed her was prying around asking questions. You her?”

“I’m not at all sure that my husband—”

The woman’s voice rose to a high, curious sound, a kind of whining bellow, and her gray face turned red. “Want nobody sneaking around here trying to mix things up so Ross won’t get what’s coming to him. There’s a motherless boy and a widower man, and their loss and grief has got to be paid for. Your man took that poor girl out onto the night roads in his big car and he kilt her dead and that’s all there is to it. Now you get off this property and don’t you come back here trying to save your man’s money by making people say bad things about Shirley...”

Jane Ann fled. As she backed out and drove away she could still hear the sustained, bawling voice of the big woman. She parked near the main road, shaken by such a display of venom. She got out of the car and sat on a big, gray, sun-warmed boulder. This was the emotional climate Shirley Mannix knew — savage and bitter and very direct.

Once she had stopped trembling she was willing to concede that perhaps such ugly directness was, in its own way, a little more honest than the way some of her acquaintances had reacted in the past two weeks. Good friends had been loyal. But the others came around with the silky and soothing little words of comfort, prying in subtle ways, their mouths set in configurations of righteous satisfaction that bawdy disaster had befallen a man who had been doing so very well — up to that point. How terrible for you, my dear! How shocking! Had he been seeing the woman very long? Will he be on a sort of leave of absence, dear? And you have such darling children.

Their venom was bittersweet and more deadly, a poison secreted by lives barren of any real satisfaction, deprived of warmth, jealous of those who had good relationships, delighted to see others pulled down to their own shoddy level.

Seeing that angry woman and the place where Mrs. Mannix had lived gave Jane Ann evidence that no lawyer could have understood. It confirmed one suspicion she’d had about the entire matter, a judgment entirely aside from any speculation about whether Johnny could be an unfaithful husband. Had he been a bachelor, had he been a permanent resident of Hartsville, had Shirley Man-mix been after him for years, it would still be unreasonable to suppose that he would have had anything to do with her.

Johnny was just too fastidious for that. There was nothing unmanly about him. He was demonstrably, even roisterously, male, but he had an almost feline tidiness in his standards regarding the desirability of women. Though he accepted women as flesh-and-blood creatures, not idealized symbols, he felt it was the social and emotional responsibility of a woman to understate herself. Obviousness, crudity, aggression, in a woman repelled him. A bellowing laugh, a clatter of junk jewelry, a florid clash of colors, a tangle of hair, too much ungirdled abundance — all these things put him off.

And so that was part of the error of the assumption the world made about John Foley and Shirley Mannix. People assumed that merely because he was a man away from home and she was a random, careless, available girl, he would want her. But, all loyalties aside, he could not want a Shirley Mannix. It was not that he was better than other men. It was just that certain characteristics offended him, and from what Jane Ann had heard, the Mannix woman had had most of those characteristics in full measure.

She arose from her rock and squared her shoulders. She knew that she had to look at every piece of the puzzle. The next part of it was the Marlow brothers. People who were not emotionally involved had put the pieces of the puzzle together, had forced the pieces into position and said they fitted perfectly. But the imperfect fit created tension, and she felt that if she could dislodge one piece, all the rest of it would explode and then have to be fitted back together in a way consistent with the heart and the spirit of the man she knew.

T. J. Arlington was friendly and perfectly willing to help her. She found him in his office in the village. After she told him what she wanted, he made several phone calls, rambling and indirect, talking of unrelated matters, putting his questions in casually, winking reassuringly at her a few times as he talked.

“Strange as it may seem,” he said finally, “both those boys are working at the same time. Lew signed on with the County Road Department, and he’s in a work crew chopping brush along the Blind Rock Lake Road. Chick is up north of here someplace, maybe at Twin Creek, they think, working for some kind of a bait and boat-rental outfit.”

“Do they live here?”

“No permanent place, Mrs. Foley. They were using Tyler’s old cabin for most of the winter and spring, but he’s got it rented now to summer folks. Twin Creek is too far for Chick to be coming back and forth. I can see if I can find out where Lew is staying these days, but I think if you want to talk to him, the best way would be to drive on out the Blind Rock Lake Road and look for the crew. There will be a man named Winkler in charge, and you can tell him it would be a favor to me if he lets you talk to Lew Marlow. But you won’t like it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Both those men are mean, Mrs. Foley. Mean, dirty mouths on them. Neither of them would throw water on a man on fire, believe me. I can’t remember them helping anybody in any way unless they were paid to do it. Or beaten into it.”

“All I can do is try.”

T. J. coughed and looked uncomfortable. “All he’ll do is try to agitate you. You’re a pretty woman, Mrs. Foley. I don’t know what he’ll say to you, but you won’t like it.”

“It doesn’t matter how he acts or what he says to me. I just want him to tell me what happened that night. He and his brother were talking to Shirley Mannix about my husband. I want to know what they said. That’s all.”

“You said Johnny can remember a little more now.”

“Yes. But not really enough to help. Not yet.”

About four miles from Hartsville she came upon the two county trucks and the road crew. Winkler was a cheerful, freckled, toothless little man. “Now, you pull farther off the road, lady, and I’ll send him on back to talk to you. Is this something about welfare?”

“No, it’s a personal matter, Mr. Winkler.”

Lew Marlow came sauntering back to the car. He was older than she had expected, a powerful man in sweaty T shirt and ragged jeans. He had thinning red hair, pale blue eyes, a face so reddened by sunburn that his nose and forehead were blistered and peeling. His belly bulged over the waistband of the jeans. He looked at her through the open car window, his stare lazy, appraising and totally insolent.

“We can take off right now, honey,” he said. “It’s too hot for this kind of work.”

“I’m Mrs. Foley. I want to talk to you about what happened the night Shirley Mannix was killed. Do you want to come around and get into the car?”

He stood silently for a moment. “I’m pretty messed up to get in the car, missis. Better we could set on that shady bank over there.” The insolence was gone. He seemed extremely polite.

They walked over to the bank. He sat a good five feet away from her, half turned to face her. “What was it you wanted to know?”

“Mr. Arlington and Mr. Stack said she was spending time with you and your brother during the evening.”

“It’s usually like that when we’re in there the same time. One thing, she never cost a man much money. Not by drinking root beer.”

“And she became... friendly with my husband?”

“She took a quick shine to him. Shirl was like that. She played up to him, and from what I hear, they left together, all right. We left about the same time T. J. did.”

“Mr. Arlington was under the impression that when she sat with you and your brother, the three of you were discussing my husband in some way.”

“I guess you could say we were, missis.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I guess you could say it was like a bet. Arlington came in with that fella, him in a business suit and white shirt and tie, and that gold wedding ring on him, and talking so neat and serious to old T. J., and I guess we kidded Shirl about taking dead aim at him, and we told her he wasn’t about to take up with the likes of her, and she vowed as how she’d get her hooks into him with hardly no trouble at all.”

“I understand she stopped him and spoke to him.”

“That’s what she did.”

“What did she say to him?”

“Ma’am, I haven’t any idea in the world. Some crazy thing. That’s what she’d do.”

“But you and your brother didn’t stay around to see her win the bet.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say that, missis. We seen her go sit with him at the bar, and from the way he took it, that bet was lost right there. We went on home.”

“And there’s nothing else you can tell me?”

“No, ma’am, not a thing. It was too bad, what happened. These are bad roads on a dark night. Shirl said she had a wish to go on down to the city, and I guess that’s where she talked him into taking her. But they only made it part way.”

“It would be pretty stupid for my husband to bring her down to where he lives and works and where a lot of people know him.”

“A man gets a woman on his mind, he doesn’t think too clear sometimes, ma’am.”

“Well, Mr. Marlow, thank you for being so cooperative.”

“I guess I wasn’t much help to you.”

She stood by the car and watched him walk back to the work area. He looked back at her once, squinting against the bright sunlight. She drove by the crew until she found a place to turn around, and then went on back to the village, waving at Mr. Winkler as she went by.

She was back in the city in time to see Johnny before returning to the house. He seemed listless and depressed. His head dressing was much smaller, and they had had him in a wheel chair on the sun deck for an hour, but he did not seem cheered by it. He had not remembered anything more. He doubted that he ever would.

“Cheer up, darling,” she told him.

“It hurts when I laugh.”

“So try a kind of ghastly chuckle.”

He stared thoughtfully at her. “You couldn’t possibly be hiding any kind of good news, could you?”

“Nothing we can use. I am the mystery woman of the north woods — poor, blind, stupid, loyal wife. But I have a feeling that the official version is suddenly going to collapse. I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling. A kind of subconscious confidence.” She frowned. “It’s almost as though I already knew something important and I don’t know exactly what it is.”

His smile was weak but it was a smile. “Tiger blood,” he said.

“What?”

“It makes me think of that time with National Appliance.”

Her cheeks felt hot. “Well, they were wrong and I was right.”

“A two-billion-dollar corporation versus one indignant little housewife.”

“They kept brushing me off.”

“Honey, they didn’t even know they were in a fight until all of a sudden they started bleeding. And then they had to fly two factory engineers in, bringing replacement parts and a letter of apology from the company president.”

“Just the vice-president. And they were very nice men. They understood that when you promise somebody something, you should do it.”

He shook his head. “Tiger blood. If I didn’t know you, honey, you’d scare me. But this time it isn’t a case of getting a new dryer fixed. This time it’s broken-down John Foley, and maybe there aren’t any spare parts. How about a job? No bonding company will touch me after this. Where do I start? Door-to-door selling? Gas jockey?”

She quelled the sudden feeling of tears. “What you do, sir, is do one thing at a time, and getting well has first priority.”

He stared at her. “Sure. Everything is going to work out fine.”

“Hasn’t it always?”

“That isn’t logic. That’s superstition.”

“So be it. I have a superstitious belief in us. And don’t forget the tiger blood.”

All night in the lonely bedroom her sleep was restless. She kept drifting in and out of tumbled dreams, awakening to a feeling of fading terror, of deep dejection.

There were so many little inconsistencies in the story of the accident, but they did not seem to point in any logical direction. Added up, they merely resulted in a feeling of wrongness.

She arose and got a drink of water and then went to the window and leaned her forehead against the cool glass and looked wistfully out at the moonlight. How do you make all the little wrong things turn out right? she thought. What do you add or subtract to make them feel consistent?... If a haystack is thirty feet high and it takes forty-one cows a month and a day to eat it down to the ground, what is the name of the farmer’s daughter?

She moved slowly back toward the bed. Suddenly she stopped and opened her eyes wide; she took a deep breath and held it. And then, walking as carefully as though she carried something fragile upon her head, she went to the bed and sat rigidly on the edge of it. She took her concept and tried to make it seem false, tried to create a new disbelief. But it would not totter. It stood squarely, based on a reality that made it more truth than supposition.

She grinned into darkness, joy commingled with a savage satisfaction. She tried to sleep, and knew she could not. She dressed and went to wake Irene to tell her she was going to drive up into the hill country again.

The interview with Sergeant Daniels and Trooper Vernon Gyce was not difficult to arrange, but convincing them that they should take action was another matter. They viewed her proposal with what she considered evasiveness.

“But what harm would it possibly do?”

Daniels cleared his throat. “The thing is, we’ve got to have something to go on.”

“You stare at me as if I’d lost my mind. Shouldn’t people be able to ask you for a little help?”

Sergeant Daniels said, “But the way we’re set up, there’s a Criminal Investigation Division to handle things like that, Mrs. Foley.”

“I don’t care who does it, just as long as somebody does. How many times do I have to tell you the things that are wrong about this whole episode, gentlemen? I’ve looked into it. I know that my husband was not drunk. He would not pick up that woman. He would not drive like that. He would use the seat belt. He would not head in this direction. And a man who is notoriously sullen and uncooperative was very sweet and polite to me. Isn’t that enough?”

The sergeant’s smile was uncomfortable. “I wouldn’t say so.”

“Then please do what I suggest.”

“But that kind of thing ought to be done by the C.I.D.”

She looked appealingly at Vernon Gyce. “Isn’t this pretty stupid, really? How can they do it if you won’t call them in?”

Gyce examined his big knuckles. “Barney, maybe we could take a shot at it unofficially, sort of. So there’s no report if it doesn’t work out.”

“On your own time, Vern.”

“It would be okay?”

“I’m giving you an hour off right now. But who pays for the phone calls?”

“I will,” Jane Ann said quickly.

“Can I use the back office?” Gyce asked.

“Go ahead. But remember, it’s unofficial.”

Jane Ann and Gyce walked into a small office in the rear of the small building. Gyce left her there alone and came back in a few moments with the master list of all the doctors in the area.

“Start with the ones nearest here?” he asked.

“I don’t think so. I think the best place to start would be with the ones in any direction outside of Hartsville except this direction. And far enough so that the doctor wouldn’t be likely to know the patient.”

He thought it over and nodded. He took a pencil and made tiny, neat little check marks beside three names. “Barleydale, Hallmeister and Quenton City, then.”

She tried to relax as he made the first call. She was conscious of the racing of her heart. “Doctor? This is Trooper Gyce, Dowellburg Barracks, sir. We want to know if on the twenty-sixth of last month you had a patient come in for treatment with injuries that could have occurred in a traffic accident. A male patient not personally known to you... Sir?... Yes, of course. Sorry to have bothered you.”

On the second call he could not get hold of the doctor. The office nurse had him wait while she checked the records. No such patient had been in.

Gyce hung up and shrugged. “Sometimes they walk away without a scratch, Mrs. Foley.”

“You saw the car. Was that likely?”

“I guess not. We’ll keep trying, anyhow.”

No luck on the third call. Next he tried Palmerton, thirty miles southeast of Hartsville. He asked his standard question. He waited. She saw his face quicken with interest. He pulled a scratch pad closer. “I’d like the details on that, sir.” She watched him write on the pad. Nine thirty A.M. 26th. Wrist, hand, ribs, laceration on jaw. Acc in woods. WMA, approx 30, tall, sandy. John Hart. Cash. “Thank you very much. Doctor. This may be what we’re looking for.”

Gyce hung up and gave Jane Ann a wide grin of delight. “Son of a gun!” he said. “It could be the jackpot. Mrs. Foley. It just might be. His office is in his home. The man arrived before office hours. There were two of them, but the doctor didn’t get a look at the other one. The man was pretty banged up. Broken wrist, badly sprained hand, cracked ribs and a facial laceration. Said he’d stumbled in the woods and hurt himself in falling. By that time his wrist was so badly swollen the doctor had a hard time setting it. Checked the hand with a fluoroscope, but no bones broken there. Taped his ribs, stitched the laceration, set the wrist and put a cast on it and put it in a sling. He said the man looked and acted as if he’d walked out of the woods and had been in considerable pain for quite a few hours, so he didn’t think twice about it. But he did ask the man to come back in a week and he never showed up. Let’s go tell Barney.”

“And then the Criminal Investigation people?”

He nodded. “Now there’s enough to go on.”

“But can they find him?”

Vernon Gyce savored a cold little smile. “They can find him.”

The C.I.D. specialists found Charles “Chick” Marlow within thirty-six hours. They found him a hundred miles from Hartsville, using a false name. He tried to go out through the window of the restaurant where they found him. They brought him back. He refused to say a word. He was questioned for twelve consecutive hours, was identified by the doctor who had treated him, and was shown a faked fingerprint record supposedly taken from the death car and a faked blood-test report supposedly made from bloodstains found at the scene of the accident.

At last he gave a great shuddering sigh and his face went slack, and at these familiar symptoms they called in the official stenographer.

“Such lousy luck,” he said softly. “All my life, nothing but this same lousy luck.”

He told all of it. He needed no further prompting. He and his brother and the Mannix woman had seen T. J. Arlington and John Foley arrive in separate cars. The three of them had been bored. The brothers had told Shirley she couldn’t pick up the stranger. There had been no plan in the beginning. It all grew out of boredom. She had stopped Foley and asked for a ride home, telling him there was a man waiting to rough her up, that she lived fairly close but didn’t have a car.

John Foley had been too wary of her to go for that. It had annoyed her, made her mad at him. Then Chick Marlow suggested to her that if she could get Foley out in the back parking lot, maybe they could convince him he should lend them his car. Lew Marlow had wanted no part of that game.

Right after T. J. Arlington left, the Marlow brothers left. Chick waited in the shadows out in back and Lew drove out in the truck and went home. It took forty minutes for Shirley Mannix to talk John Foley into giving her a lift home. As soon as they were out in the lot, Shirley, by prearrangement, grabbed John Foley and kissed him.

“I come up behind him and clunked him with a rock. I put him in his car, in the back, and got the keys and drove it out of there. We felt crazy, laughing and all. We said how we’d leave him off someplace and take his car papers and credit cards and see if we could make it all the way to California. I don’t know if we were kidding or if we were really going to do it. She got up and leaned over the seat and felt him and said he was breathing okay. We didn’t see how he could make much trouble, on account of, after all, she had picked him up. She’d left the place with him. A lot of people saw that. And then all of a sudden I saw I maybe wasn’t going to make that big curve this side of Dowellburg.”

The accident had injured him painfully, but it did not knock him out. He found Foley first, and was frightened at the way the man looked. It took him longer to find Shirley Mannix. He lighted a match with his good hand and saw that she was dead. When he heard the truck stopping, he ran into the brush. When the driver was gone, he started back toward Hartsville, walking on the shoulder of the road, ducking for cover whenever he heard a car coming. He got to the cabin he shared with his brother at eight in the morning, circling wide to come up behind it so he would not be seen. His brother drove him to the doctor in Palmerton and then took him out of the area, where pertinent questions might be asked about his injuries.

The charges were assault, grand theft, kidnaping and felony murder.

The newspapers corrected themselves with all the space and attention that any story with a warm and human angle merits, housewife solves kidnap mystery... BAR-GIRL PROVES ACCOMPLICE.

They all were interviewed and photographed — Jane Ann, Irene, the children, Johnny. Theirs was a three-day fame, and Jane Ann was glad when it was over.

One afternoon soon afterward, she pushed Johnny’s wheel chair down the long corridor to the sun room and then sat with him. She smiled at him, muffling a yawn.

“Exhausted by the plaudits of the masses?” he asked.

“I guess. I don’t know. If I didn’t feel so sleepy and so contented, I’d be getting sort of angry, I guess.”

“About what, honey?”

“They act as if they’d never had the slightest doubt about you. Tom Haskell and that insurance man. Don Jennsen too. They act as if it were just a matter of time until it all came out. Heck, I don’t want medals or anything. I don’t want people apologizing to me for the things they said when it looked the worst, but...”

“Just what did put you on the right track, anyway?”

“It was the buildup people gave Lew Marlow. He was supposed to be such a horrible animal, surly and dangerous, and then he couldn’t have been sweeter to me. Courteous and helpful. Like a fool, I thought it was because I was such a nice girl. Until I thought about it the other night when I couldn’t sleep. Why had he been so nice? What was he trying to establish? And then I thought of a good reason for the forced charm, and it just... seemed to fit.”

He shook his head wonderingly. “I give you the John Foley Award for wifemanship. For unlimited incredulity.”

“For tiger blood?”

“Of the most savage and stubborn variety.”

“It’s not much fun being a tiger. It’s lonely work.” She tried to smile, but it was a small and crooked effort.

He took her hand. “What’s wrong?”

“I... I don’t know, really. This is supposed to be the happy ending, isn’t it? Name cleared, job safe and you’ll be home in ten days. Fade-out with violins. But... oh, I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” Her mouth trembled.

“Maybe the valiant Jane Ann is just fresh out of strength. All used up.”

“More than that, Johnny. Something else. A feeling of having lost something along the way and not knowing what it is.”

“Do you want me to try to tell you?” he asked.

She nodded, her eyes solemn.

“It’s a kind of loss of innocence. For both of us. We had some funny little illusions left — like believing that the world will take you at your own value. But it won’t. We know that now.”

“Then is it just you and me, Johnny? The way I value you and the way you value me?”

“Is that so bad?”

“No. But things can get cruel and cold out there.”

“When you’re alone, Jane Ann.”

She wiped her eyes. “I am a lonely woman in a lonely house, and you’d better come home, I think.”

He reached out and stroked her hair, pulled her close and kissed the salt taste of her lips.

“I shouldn’t come here and snivel at you,” she said.

He kissed her again.

“When I get rested up, I’ll be fine again,” she said.

He kissed her the third time, at greater length.

She sighed, stirred, sat up and looked at him owlishly. “What were we talking about?” she asked.

Content

John D. MacDonald
A Matter of Trust