Solo Faces (19 page)

“No, I didn’t.”

“We were just there for a two-week visit,” she said. “My husband and I.”

“Is that right?”

“We went to all the islands,” she said with a friendly smile.

Blue Pacific days. In the morning, mist, the sound of birds. The dark, shadowy fronds plunged down from the heights of the palms. Carol’s footsteps in the hallway. Sometimes, lying in his room, Rand imagined they were lingering.

He knew she was watching him. He could feel her glance in the kitchen or at the table. At times, without deliberation, their eyes would meet—she would not look away. He had always admired her. She was returning this admiration.

Cabot drank. He had two or three before dinner and then wine, he couldn’t sleep otherwise. If he came to the surface in the predawn hours the same thoughts kept passing through his mind. The wheelchair with its chrome glinted in the moonlight near his bed.

He had never slept well, even before the accident. In those days when he woke he would dress in darkness and go out and walk. Sometimes he was gone for hours. When dawn came he would be on the highest point around, watching the sky lighten and then turning homeward.

That had been taken from him. He lay now staring into the dark. He’d prayed to God, he’d read poetry, philosophy, trying to force his life into a new shape. During the day it seemed to work but at night it was different, it all leaked away and he was a boy again imagining the world and what he would do in it, except that his legs lay soft as rags.

He raised himself on his elbow. One at a time, he lifted his legs to the floor. He pulled the wheelchair close and lowered himself into it. Silently he went down the hall.

“Vern.” He pushed open the door. “Are you awake?”

“What is it?”

“I can’t sleep.”

Rand fumbled with the light.

“If I have a couple of drinks I’m usually all right, but tonight I just couldn’t sleep. It’s funny, I used to watch my father pouring it down. Had nothing but contempt for him in those days. Some nights he couldn’t even talk.”

“What time is it?” Rand asked sleepily.

“About three.”

“Come on in.”

“You don’t mind?”

“No.” He sat up. “No, I’ve been wanting to talk.”

Cabot was grateful.

“I’d like to find out what really is wrong,” Rand said.

“What’s wrong? I’m a lousy cripple.”

“Is that true?”

Cabot stared at him.

“I’ve been watching you. You’re sitting there reading. Evelyn comes by, you have a few drinks. You’re taking it very calmly.”

“Calmly?”

“Carol is, too.”

“You just don’t know,” Cabot said.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t have any idea. I’m not calm. I’m just waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“The truth is, I was planning to shoot myself. I told that to someone at the hospital, another paraplegic. I thought I was going to show him how a man behaves or some damn thing. All he said was, make sure you don’t miss and paralyze your arms.”

“How is it you still have strength in your arms?”

“Didn’t Carol explain it to you?”

“She tried to.”

“My arms …” He reached over for Rand’s hand. He began to press it to one side, his other hand holding a wheel of the chair. They struggled against one another. The sinews of his neck stood out; slowly he was forcing Rand’s arm down. Finally he released it. He was breathing hard. “It’s down here I’m a little weak,” he said.

“I was going to ask about that.”

Cabot said nothing. He seemed almost disinterested.

“What exactly do you have left?”

“Below the waist, nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Absolutely zero,” Cabot said amiably.

“I was right. You’re taking it calmly.”

“Well, you try it.”

“And your wife is, too.”

“She hasn’t got much choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“She hasn’t left yet, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh, she’s not going to leave …”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“ …not as long as you’re in a wheelchair.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Rand shrugged.

“Because I’m not,” Cabot said.

“She wouldn’t leave a cripple.”

“You think that’s what’s keeping her here?”

“Ah, Jack, I don’t care about that. I’m thinking about something else. You know the first thing I heard was that you were probably going to die. But you didn’t, you fought your way back. Then I hear that you’re crippled …”

“Go on.”

“Do I believe that?”

“That’s not really the question,” Cabot said quietly. “The question is: can
I
somehow believe it?”

Until morning, when the pale green tendrils of Mrs. Dabney’s star pine waved dreamily as if beneath the sea, they talked, their voices sometimes raised in argument but more often quiet, confiding. There was an understanding between them, the kind that has its roots at the very source of life. There were days they would always remember: immense, heartbreaking effort and at the top, what rapture, they shook each other’s hand with glowing faces, their very being confirmed.

C
AROL HAD GONE FOR
the evening. The house was still, it was the chance Rand had been waiting for. He sauntered into the room and sat down.

“Evelyn was here earlier. You missed her,” Cabot said. He was watching the evening news as usual, a glass in his hand.

“What did she have to say?”

“Oh, legal stuff. She wanted to talk about you. She’s very interested in you.”

Rand had gotten up and was pouring a drink.

“It probably doesn’t surprise you,” Cabot said.

“No.”

“I don’t know what you said to her. You told her something about climbing …”

“Too much,” Rand commented.

“Anyway, it floored her.”

The hour was tranquil. In the dusk a bat flew recklessly above the dark pines, changing direction like a bird that has just been hit.

“I decided to see if I could shock her,” Rand admitted. “So I told her the truth.”

“Such as?”

“I told her I’d been climbing for fifteen years. For most of that, ten years anyway, it was the most important thing in my life. It was the only thing. I sacrificed everything to it. Do you know the one thing I learned about climbing? The one single thing?”

“What?”

“It is of no importance whatsoever.”

“Is that what you told her?”

“Whatsoever,” he said.

“What is?”

“I don’t have to tell you: the real struggle comes afterward.”

Sometimes when they talked it seemed as if they had arranged themselves casually—Cabot had merely sat down in a wheelchair that happened to be there. It was as if he might stand up at any moment, discarding his incapacity like throwing off a blanket. Sometimes he actually seemed on the very point of rising and then, as if warned, he relented. Rand had noticed this. It’s difficult to know what convinced him, perhaps something hidden. Truth lay beneath the surface.

The California night was falling, the ocean darkness. Another day had passed. He sipped his drink and reflected quietly,

“Something’s happened to us, Jack.”

“Has it? I hadn’t noticed.”

“It’s happened to me, too. I’ll tell you something I bet you’re going to try and deny.”

“What?”

“You’re being betrayed.”

“Ah, that.”

“I mean it.”

“We never are but by ourselves betrayed …,” Cabot recited.

“That’s only half of it. Do you want to know the rest?”

There was a silence. Cabot waited.

“The people who claim to be helping you, Carol, Evelyn, the doctors, they want to keep you in that chair.”

“Oh, have a drink.”

“I mean it.” He was silent for a moment. “You know, I always believed in you, I did from the first.”

“So?”

“In your strength, desire. Your will to succeed.”

Cabot made some vague reply.

“I still believe in you.”

“What are you getting at?”

“You’ve surrendered. I’ve seen you though, when you weren’t aware of it, start to stand up.”

“It’s a reflex.”

“I know you can do it,” Rand said.

Cabot wheeled himself to the table near the door to turn on the lights.

“I know you can do it, but you’re not going to. You’ve given up.” He was speaking to Cabot’s back. “And if you’ve given up, where does that leave me?”

“You?”

Rand waited.

“I don’t know,” Cabot admitted. He was filling his glass. “I know where it leaves me. I’m not a victim of hysteria or some destructive urge. I know you think that, but there are such things as physical problems. No amount of belief can overcome them. I mean, death is an example. Do you believe in death?”

“I suppose so.”

“Me too.”

“But you’re not dead.”

“No.”

There was a dedication in Rand’s voice, a seriousness that would not be put aside by indifference or drink. He was trying to force out the truth or some form of it, difficult because truth was reluctant and could alter its appearance. It was one thing in the high reaches of the Alps. It was another in a house in Montecito lighted against the darkness where Cabot was sitting on a rubber cushion in a gleaming chromium chair with something twisted in him, some crucial part that could not be touched.

“You were always ahead of me,” Rand said. “I’d never have gone to Europe except for you.”

“You might have.”

“Do you remember the nights we camped at the foot of the Dru?”

“ …Infallibly bringing rain.”

“You gave me all that. You made me do the greatest things of my life.”

Cabot didn’t know what to reply. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” was all he could say.

“Now just do one more thing …”

“You know, you’re like my aunt. She says if I only pray, if I pray hard enough, then who knows what will happen? She won’t stop telling me that, she’ll never stop believing it. She’s a nice woman, I’ve always liked her, but she’s not a doctor. God’s a doctor, I know, but Auntie, listen to me, even God can’t make me walk. I’ve tried. I really have tried.” He looked at Rand openly. He was too proud to beg but he was asking for understanding. “Believe me,” he said.

“I’ve talked to your doctor.”

“Have you?”

“He told me something I can’t understand: there’s nothing physically wrong with you. Something is keeping you in that chair.”

Cabot in the confusion of drunkenness was hearing things he knew were untrue. They seemed to swim crazily, daring him to refute them.

“All right, something’s keeping me in this chair,” he said wearily.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Have you lost your courage? Like me?” Rand said.

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you prove it?” Rand said. He poured his glass half full like an adversary prepared to spend the night and at the same time raised his hand from between his legs. In it, blue and heavy, was a pistol.

Cabot stared at it. “That’s mine,” he remarked.

“There’s a bullet in it. You don’t have to do anything I don’t do.”

A car turning up the driveway, the telephone ringing, Cabot was waiting for a summons back to reality.

“If you’ve lost your courage, you’ve lost everything. It doesn’t matter after that.” Rand drank. “I’ll go first.”

Cabot suddenly reached for the gun.

“Don’t,” Rand said holding it away from him. He cocked it and spun the cylinder. “The leader never falls.”

Cabot watched him put the muzzle almost carelessly next to his ear and pull the trigger. There was an empty click.

“Your turn.”

“No.”

Rand said nothing.

“I can’t,” Cabot said.

“Have a drink.”

“I’ve had enough.”

“You’ve already died,” Rand said.

“Not quite.”

“I was with you. We were caught up there. Lightning was hitting the peak. You’re not going to back down now?”

“I’m not quite drunk enough.”

“Go ahead,” Rand commanded.

Cabot stared at the gun. Its darkness was intense. It was radiating power. He picked it up. He put it to his head. The hammer fell on an empty chamber. A sudden rush of happiness, almost bliss, swept over him. Rand reached for the gun.

“Climbing,” he said. He raised it to his head once more. Another click. “Come on up.”

The bullet was in one of the remaining chambers. The gun came to his hand like a card in a poker game, Cabot barely looked at it. He was staring at Rand. He had a sense of dizziness as the blunt, heavy muzzle touched near his eye, an eye that would not even, he thought clumsily, have time to blink. His face was wet. His heart was beating wildly. He squeezed the trigger.

Click.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Rand said.

“That’s enough.”

Rand had hold of the barrel,

“We’ve come this far.” His eyes were burning, his concentration was intense. “One more.”

He raised the gun. Cabot reached forward to stop him. A glass went over and crashed to the floor. Almost in the wake of it, concealed, the hammer fell.

Silence. Cabot took the gun.

“That’s it,” he said.

“No.”

They stared at one another.

“I can’t.”

“One more.”

He closed his eyes. The room was spinning.

“You have to,” he heard.

The lights of the world would go out, the night devour him, he would be at peace. He was this close to it. His thoughts were tumbling, pouring past. He was clinging to the final moments.

“Pull.”

He could not.

“Pull!”

His finger tightened.

“Pull!” a voice said.

A click.

He hardly knew what was happening. Rand had leaped to his feet.

“You did it!” he was shouting. “You did it! Now get up! Get up!” Suddenly he grew quieter. “You can,” he pledged. “You can! Get up!”

He began to shake the wheelchair. Cabot’s head was bobbing. They were like drunken students breaking furniture. Belief was flooding the room.

“You can! You can!”

Across the dark path between the houses, Mrs. Dabney sitting with her bathrobe-clad husband could hear the shouting.

A violent force was pulling at the wheelchair, tilting it, spilling Cabot to the floor where he sat in a heap, legs bent curiously, and began to laugh.