I said. I couldn’t get my mind on anything. With the grand jury coming up we were walking through spilled gasoline with cigarettes in our hands and I couldn’t even think about it. All I could see was an empty flat ocean of time to be crossed before I would see her again. And what do you suppose she goes through, I thought, out there with that crazy bastard and never knowing what he knows or what he’ll do? We’ve got to get away. But how? And using what for money? And if I run now there’ll be an investigation for certain. It would look like guilt; why else would a man run off and leave his wife and home? And if they brought an indictment she’d just be moving around over the country with another fugitive. From what little she’d told me I could see what it had done to him, and I didn’t want any of it.
Thursday I had to go with one of the other deputies to take a prisoner to the state penitentiary, and we didn’t get back until late Friday afternoon. I was jumpy and on edge, and drove like a madman. When I got back in town I found out from Buford that the grand-jury session had been moved back to Monday. After nightfall I slipped out of town and headed for the lake. There was still no moon, but by now I could run the channel in the dark.
There was nothing to do but pray she would come. She did. At eleven or a little after she came swimming down the channel and waded out of the water where I stood waiting for her.
“I almost died, Jack. I thought something had happened when you didn’t come. We can’t go on like this.”
“I know,” I said.
“Can’t we go away tonight?” she whispered. “Now. Just take me away somewhere.”
“In a bathing suit?” I said. “With no money? We can’t.”
“We could go back in your boat and get my clothes, what few things I have.”
I held her tightly, wanting to tell her yes but knowing we had to wait. “I know,” I said. “But it won’t be more than a few days more. I’ve got it all figured out. I can sell my boat and trailer and all the fishing and camping gear. I think I can get two hundred for it. And the old Ford will take us. We’ll go to Nevada; that’s far enough away. I can work at something, and we can get divorces and be married.”
“All right,” she said slowly. “But please make it soon.”
Suddenly, I felt her shiver as if she had a chill. “What is it, baby? Are you cold?”
“No,” she said. “I guess I was just trying to shake off a feeling I keep having, a sort of premonition that we haven’t got much time. It’s like one of those dreams you have—you know, when you’re trying to catch a train and can’t get out of the waiting room because somebody has locked the door. You see the train pulling out and you keep on tugging at the door. ...”
“Don’t do that, honey. It’s going to be all right.”
“Yes. I know. Only—”
“Only what?”
“I keep remembering something that happened a long time ago. I thought of it just then, when I had that chill.”
“What is it?”
It was one of the strangest things I had ever known in my life. I began to know what she meant almost before she told me. She’d hardly said a word before it was all right there before me.
“It’s a silly thing,” she said. “But it’s so plain, even after all these years. I can hear the school bell, and see the street corner in the early morning with the sun shining, and that big woolly-looking dog going by with the newspaper in his mouth—”
“Wait!” I said, wondering. “What dog? Say that again!”
“You made me late for school,” she went on slowly, almost as if to herself. “It was the first time in my life I’d ever been late. But you were carrying my books, and you stopped to chase the dog to get the paper away from him”
“No!” I said. “Let me think. Doris… Doris… And your father was a minister, you said. I know now!”
“Doris Carroll,” she said. “Didn’t you know who I was, Jack? But then, with a different name… And it must have been more than fifteen years ago. I knew you though, as soon as you told me your name.”