Faithless: Tales of Transgression Read online

  Please, she’d begged, let’s remember each other as we used to be. Can’t we?

  Stroking the rifle he felt calmed, reassured. He cared for it with a methodical tenderness. Oil gleamed on the metal parts like a film of perspiration, a smell he liked. And the smell of the maple stock he’d polished until it shone with pride. Afterward putting on tight-fitting leather gloves and carefully cleaning the rifle of all fingerprints and smudges.

  Just to be certain, he’d wiped it down twice.

  Please, she’d begged. R whispered, Yes.

  Driving now to the cul-de-sac a mile beyond 11 Ridge Road and returning and passing the house seeing that lights were on in most of the rooms. That warm domestic glow through sliding glass doors and plate-glass windows partly hidden from the road by trees. He drove on. Returned to the high-rise building on the river with the name Riverview Tower affixed. And hours later emerging again in dark clothes, a dark cap pulled down onto his forehead. Returning to his car this time with the rifle carried inside a garment bag to be removed from the bag in the privacy of his car.

  Now he’d returned to his vigil it was late November and a bright-bone moon shone above the tall trees of Ridge Road. The visible world was bathed in chill moonlight drained of color as in a black-and-white photograph. There was the Lexus still parked in the driveway! For neighbors and passers-by to see. And the white car, her car, diminutive in the carport. Most of the house lights were darkened but the kitchen light and the lights above the carport were still on.

  Maybe it’s a game you’re playing. But not me.

  If she’d wanted R to go away forever, she’d have changed the mailbox when he’d moved out. There was that understanding between them.

  R cut his lights and made a U-turn in the road. He parked a short distance from the driveway of 11 Ridge Road, not where he’d parked last time but at a curve in the road, where his car was partly obscured by a redwood fence and shrubs. He parked facing the driveway. He was counting on the owner of the Lexus not staying the night. For if his wife’s lover dared to remain until dawn, and the suburban world coming alive, R couldn’t last his vigil; he’d have to leave, before he was noticed; but the lover, the adversary, usually left by 2 A.M., for R ’s wife seemed not to want the man in her bed all night, out of consideration for their daughter possibly, wanting to spare the six-year-old seeing another man in Daddy’s bed; or possibly R ’s wife simply wanted her new lover gone. She’d make use of him as women make use of men and expel him, poor bastard, as she’d expelled R when she was finished with him.

  So he waited.

  Waited in a trance, eyes open but unseeing. Head against the headrest and one gloved hand, his right, laid upon the stock of the rifle. It was about 2:20 A.M. he heard voices, and a car door slamming, and there were the rear red lights of the Lexus, and the car being backed out of the driveway. It’s time. At last! R felt relief like a man who’d been swimming underwater now surfacing to the air to fill his lungs with oxygen. Not switching on his ignition until the Lexus was a block away and not switching on his headlights until the Lexus was turning off Ridge Road onto a larger road, a state highway.

  R followed the metallic-silver car down toward the city, and the river. Empty streets, empty intersections. The Lexus moved in the direction of a bridge, R a distance of about a city block behind. Easy to keep his adversary in sight. Easy to contemplate what he should do. Following the man to his home and then? then what? He wasn’t certain. When he knew, he would know. He wasn’t a man to shrink from doing what had to be done though for the past year or more he’d been in a kind of waking trance, behaving in a way he seemed to know was the “way” to behave like an actor stumbling through his role, yet not believing in it. But I have you now. Poor bastard. They were the only two crossing the bridge, which was a high, humped, double-span bridge in the moonlight, a mesh of crossed steel trusses supported by massive girders and thick stone pillars like ancient towers. The bridge was maybe fifty feet above the river at its highest point. By day an ordinary bridge, weatherworn and sooty, in need of repair; by night a strange fantastical structure that looked, as you moved onto it, like a launching pad. R felt a stab of excitement. His hunter’s instinct! Keeping the red lights of the car in front of him in sight, matching his speed exactly with his adversary’s speed: 40 mph.

  Strange, he was smiling. R who since the catastrophe so rarely smiled.

  I deserve this! Deserve something.

  Recalling how as a boy he’d be struck by weird flashes of happiness for no apparent reason. Alone, at such times. Once, crossing a footbridge beside a railroad trestle, above this same river in wind-driven wet snow; another time, in a movie house, astonished at the ease with which the camera slipped from the consciousness of a man desperately driving a car to a head-on shot of the car seen approaching and to an aerial shot of the same speeding car. So easy! To get out of yourself.

  Except it wasn’t. That was mankind’s curse.

  R had been feeling relief that his adversary didn’t live in his own neighborhood. What if, in R ’s very building? And their cars in the same parking garage? But he lived on the far side of the river, R was following him now along an elevated riverside highway, seeing in the corner of his eye his own high-rise apartment building across the river, mostly darkened, though here and there riddled with light; he’d left his own lights on, tenth-floor lights visible at this distance. The other, the adversary in the silver-metallic car, lived 2.2 miles from the bridge in a renovated riverfront area where condominium “villages” had been fashioned out of derelict warehouses and factories, aged granite and brick refurbished with sleek facades, vaulting plate-glass windows, decks and balconies overlooking the river. The place was called Riverside Heights. It was one of those R had considered at the time of his separation.

  The way we live now. Some of us.

  R parked in a shadowy drive, headlights off, observing his adversary parking the Lexus on the second floor of a well-lighted parking garage. The garage was adjacent to a row of two-story townhouses. These residences were mostly darkened and there appeared to be no one in the vicinity. Emptied trash containers at a curb. The time was 2:55 A.M. If a shot were fired in such a place, the gunman would have to flee immediately; possibly there’d be time for a second shot, but he wouldn’t be able to examine his victim up close. In R ’s gloved hands was the Springfield rifle, the safety lock now off. The drama of that click! R had lowered the window beside him and was leaning out, aiming the barrel at his target, liking the feel of the weapon in his hands, its weight and heft. Pull the trigger or don’t pull, it’s your choice. A way of calming your thoughts. A gun in your hand, you’re not bullshitting anybody including yourself.

  R wasn’t used to the scope, turning the focusing ring until abruptly he saw his target, his adversary, up close, from a distance of only a few feet. Oblivious of R the man was locking the door of his Lexus. His face in the crosshairs of R ’s scope. R ’s mouth had gone dry; his heart was beginning to pound. It was a good sensation. Have to want to hunt, to kill. Or was it kill, to hunt. He saw that his wife’s lover, his adversary, was about R ’s age, not younger as he’d believed. The man wore a russet-brown leather coat, he was hatless, hair the color of ditch-water and thinning at the crown. His skin was slightly coarse, the cartilage in his nose appeared just slightly twisted. His forehead was lined. It was late, he was tired, possibly his parting words with R ’s wife troubled him, for a woman’s words lingering in the mind are always troubling. R didn’t want to think, Divorced, poor bastard, like me. Calmly R was following his target through the scope, the crosshairs tremulous on his adversary’s face, his throat, the carotid artery, now the side of his head, his left ear, now the back of the head, his back in the leather coat. So strange, R ’s adversary had no awareness of him. As wild creatures, hunted, seem always to have a sense of being watched, lifting their heads alertly, their eyes moving, ears pricked for the slightest sound and their nostrils twitching. Man is the only animal oblivious o
f death, is that it? R allowed his adversary to move behind a concrete post, knowing he’d reappear at the exit ramp. There was only one way for the man to come, to get to the row of townhouses. R was thinking how, once he pulled the trigger, his vigil would end. Once he pulled the trigger and his adversary fell, whether dead or wounded, or dying, once the sound of the shot rang out in this quiet, he, R_, would be propelled into action. The first thing, escape. He was certain he’d have no trouble getting out of the Riverside Heights complex. A few seconds, his headlights off, trusting to street lights and the waning moon, he’d be gone. It was his plan to dispose of the rifle (this rifle that was possibly the only thing he owned that he truly valued), drop it in the river on his way back, and his gloves smelling of gun powder. And his vigil would end.

  That would be the hard part. The vigil ended.

  He would be a prime suspect in the stranger’s death. A man not known personally to R but of course his wife, that’s to say his ex-wife, would tell the police. R ’s life that was so intensely private and secret would become a public life, at least for a while. Yet R had faith in himself, he would never be charged with the “crime.” He wouldn’t even hire a lawyer; he hated lawyers living off the misery of others. What would shame him would be having to lie to other men. Not being able to tell other men, men like himself, Sure I killed the bastard fucking my wife. For he knew (any man knew) it was a necessary act, a just act. But he’d be forced to lie. Forced to make himself into another man, an inferior man, a man who lied. And his vigil, that had come to be his life, would end.

  His finger strained against the trigger; he was prepared. Seeing the man in the leather coat was exiting the parking garage exactly as R had anticipated. Now about thirty feet away from R_, and walking with purpose. The paved area through which the adversary moved was well-lighted, like the area around R ’s high-rise building; ironically, to deter crime, for these renovated areas near the river were bracketed by poor ghetto neighborhoods with high crime rates, and a flourishing drug trade; but R was hidden in shadow. If the adversary glanced toward R he would see maybe the front bumper, the chrome grill of a parked car and no more. R was watching his adversary through the scope, centering the delicate crosshairs on the man’s forehead. Why should you live if I can’t? Fire on an intake of breath. Or was it an exhalation of breath. But what was his adversary doing?—instead of heading for one of the townhouses, turning his back so that R could fire at the heart, he’d gone to the trash cans on the curb, and was stooping to drag two of them clumsily with him. Yellow plastic trash containers like R ’s own.

  Fuck! Can’t kill a man at such a time.

  The All-Nite Bridge Diner. R had seen the diner glinting like cheap tin beyond the bridge ramp. He parked and locked his car and went inside. Lights bright as a dentist’s office, booths with ripped vinyl seats and Formica-topped tables and full-color plastic photos of giant cheeseburgers with french fries, hotdogs and pie. R was dying of thirst. R was hungry, ravenous. There was a roaring in R ’s ears like a waterfall or possibly rock music from a radio. R sat at the counter. Elbows on the damp counter. Adrenaline flooded his veins like liquid flame leaving him shaking and sweaty but now beginning to fade like water down a stopped-up drain, slow but inevitable. It was 3:17 A.M. and he’d been awake for a long time. He was still wearing his gloves, which meant (he believed) it hadn’t happened yet. R and his adversary were both (still) alive. Or had it happened, and that was why his blood beat so strangely? Why he was so hungry?—as if he hadn’t eaten (and maybe he hadn’t) for a day or more. In one of the torn vinyl booths a young couple paused in their conversation to look at R . On a stool at the counter a middle-aged black man in a security guard’s uniform regarded R sidelong with a wary expression. In a foggy mirror behind the counter was a male face, fierce and heated. The skin was waxy but flushed in patches as if he’d been slapped. The eyes were bloodshot and dilated. A man in his mid- or late thirties in a canvas jacket open at the throat, hadn’t shaved in some time so his beard was pushing out like barbed wire glinting gray. In the rifle scope he’d seen the other’s face clean-shaven, that look of hope. Damp-combing hair that’s thinning, rubbing and slapping a face to bring a little life to it. Hey: love me? I’m a deserving guy.

  Behind the counter was a brass-haired waitress of about forty with a red-lipstick smile determined to be friendly and welcoming to R who was a stranger in the All-Nite Bridge Diner and in a state of unnatural exaltation that might’ve been, but didn’t appear to be, alcohol- or drug-induced. The woman handed R a stained menu saying, “How’re you this evening, mister?” R was wiping his face with a napkin. Reasoning that, if he was here, allowing these witnesses to take note of him, and if he was still wearing the gloves, his rifle would still be in the rear of the car, zipped up safely in the garment bag. Hasn’t happened yet. The vigil not over. Not yet! R said, smiling at the woman, “Ma’am, I’m the happiest I’ve been in my life.”

  WE WERE WORRIED ABOUT YOU

  Dad was driving the family home from church in the shining new 1949 Packard Admiral when the hitchhiker appeared suddenly at the side of the road. As if, out of the tar-splotched weeds, the bleach of Sunday sun, the man had leaped up. And his strange staring eyes, and his gray wisps of beard like an aged dog’s muzzle. And his bib overalls, and his greasy red bandanna around his neck. A man of no age you could guess except not young, with a smudged face, a look of being familiar yet—who was he?

  “Oh!—should we stop? He looks so sad,” Mom cried.

  Dad was already slowing the Packard so’s to see the hitchhiker’s face more clearly. Often, these country highways and dirt-gravel roads, it’s a neighboring farmer’s “handyman” or somebody’s old hermit-uncle it would be bad manners to pass by though the smell of him would pervade your car.

  Dad, driving the new Packard. Four-door, cushioned seats. Heavy as a tank and of the hue and pride of something military—the sheen of the finish, a muted silver-grape, and the splendid chrome trim, front, rear, and sides, aflame in the Sunday sun. You can’t imagine the joy! You can try but it’s gone, it’s lost and you can’t retrieve it: pretty Mom in the front passenger’s seat trying to smile at Dad’s teasing (Dad is good-natured, but his humor has barbs) these ten or so minutes since leaving the weathered-gray shingleboard Methodist church in Haggertsville where once again the new minister Reverend Bogard wept during his sermon speaking of the suffering of Jesus Christ Our Savior and of humankind’s (and his own) failings each of which is yet another spike in Christ’s bleeding hands and feet, another thorn lacerating His tender forehead. Reverend Bogard’s emotional outbursts stirred the women of the congregation to sympathy, tears, even pain but frankly embarrassed the men, and Dad was an impatient man, any display of weakness made him squirm. Mom smiled at his words of criticism but rarely contradicted, not quick or bold enough, to match wits with him. As with careful fingers she removed several long hatpins from her glazed-straw navy blue pillbox hat and her curled brunette hair, removing then the hat and placing it on her lap beside her navy blue straw purse and her spotless white lace gloves she’d worn into church, and out, then peeled off in the privacy of the Packard, like the other wives and mothers of the congregation in cars manned by husbands—no one wore white Sunday gloves for one minute longer than necessary!

  And in the rear of the Packard, pigtailed Ann-Sharon, aged eight; and Baby Bimmy, aged three.

  Then, so abruptly, the hitchhiker. On the Haggertsville Road, Route 33, approximately halfway home. How tall he seemed!—like a walking scarecrow. Eyes lifting to the oncoming car creased and narrowed as if the Packard were ablaze, blinding like a fiery chariot, and standing to peer over Mom’s shoulder Baby Bimmy saw the hitchhiker raise his arm tentatively, gesture with his thumb, a mute appeal—Help me? Whoever you are?

  But Dad was saying, “Nobody we know.”

  Mom said softly, “But he looks so—sad!”

  “He might be dangerous,” Dad said. “Might be a drinker. And he’d surely smell.�
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  Already we were passing the hitchhiker, already the rush of air in the Packard’s wake was shaking his beard, ruffling his red bandanna. In a firm, slightly chiding voice, meant only for Mom to hear, Dad said, “Anyway, dear, as you can see—there’s no room for somebody else.”

  AND ANOTHER Sunday after church, Dad was driving his family into Yewville for dinner at Grandma’s, Sunday dinner it’s called though served promptly at 1 P.M., and this time—“Oh, look!—is that a woman?” Mom’s voice lifted more in faint astonishment than in dismay or disapproval as out of a patch of tall thistles by the elevated train tracks a disheveled figure in trousers, a torn plaid shirt, a man’s unlaced shoes staggered into the road blinking and raising her arm, jerking her thumb in a gesture almost rude, or obscene, indicating she wanted a ride into town. She had a red-roughened face, carroty-frizzy matted hair.

  And those eyes!—glittering like coal chunks sunk in flesh.

  Bim thought, trembling, She sees me.

  “Should we stop, dear?—she must be desperate,” Mom said uncertainly. “She might be ill, or …”

  Dad was braking the Packard, though not to a full stop. The hitchhiker was in the road and he would have to drive around her.

  Years had passed and the Packard was less new. But manned with no less pride by Dad who kept it in “A-1 condition” lovingly washing and polishing with chamois cloths the elegant silver-grape chassis, keeping the windshields clean despite the hundreds—thousands?—of flying insects that mangled and smeared themselves on the glass. His boy Bim was thrilled to assist him, dreamy Saturday mornings, as, over the car radio turned up high, a baseball game—St. Louis Cardinals! Chicago Cubs! New York Yankees! Brooklyn Dodgers! Cincinnati Reds!—was so vividly broadcast Bim would swear, thirty years later, his Dad had actually taken him to the ballpark and they’d witnessed with their own eyes such spectacles as a ninth-inning bases-loaded home run by Stan Musial, a similar ecstatic home run by Joe DiMaggio, they’d joined in the frenzied cheers for Jackie Robinson loping like a panther past first, past second, past third, and HOME! This Sunday, in an August heat-haze, the interior of the little shingled church was so airless even Reverend Bogard, face greasy with perspiration, seemed eager to hurry the service to its conclusion. One less hymn sung than usual. “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” pumped out on the organ and the white-haired organist’s ruffled pink rayon blouse stained across the back in the shocking shape of a bat with outspread wings, so the congregation was released early to the glimmering August sky, families hurrying to their cars and all windows cranked down to allow air to rush inside, once in motion, with a deceptive feel of coolness. As the Packard accelerated Mom laughed, breathless, pressing her hands (bare hands, she’d quickly peeled off her gloves) against her whipping hair. In the backseat, Ann-Sharon and Bim giddy with heat in starched Sunday clothes bounced on the cushions, “Drive faster, Daddy!—faster!”