Praying for Sleep

encounters, verbatims of his delusional ramblings, psychopharmacologists’ and social workers’ reports . . . Adler spun back to confront the files, spearing some sheets of paper beneath his narrow fingers and clutching others randomly. He looked at a page of transcript but he saw instead Michael Hrubek’s face—eyes that revealed no ebullience or lethargy, no affection or contempt, no trust or doubt.
    Adler sat very still for a moment. Suddenly, he looked up at the lined, exhausted face of the state trooper and spoke what he devoutly believed to be the truth. “Hrubek’s making for the train station. He’s going to Washington, D.C. Send your troopers to Boyleston. Now!”
     
    The two sisters went about their tasks, combing the house, shutting out lights. They walked in silence, jumping at the noise when there was thunder and at the shadows when there was not. Finally, the house was lit only by ambient light from outside and a few blue up-lamps in the greenhouse, which Lis had left on for the comfort of the faint illumination; she reckoned they’d be invisible from the outside. Shadows fluttered on the walls and floors. Together, they returned to the kitchen and sat side by side on a bench, facing an army of pine and birch trees through the rain-swept backyard.
    Five minutes of quiet passed, the rain battering the greenhouse, the wind screaming through the holes and cracks in the old house. Finally Lis was no longer able to keep from speaking. “Portia, there’s something I started to tell you tonight.”
    “Earlier?”
    “The affair,” Lis whispered discreetly, as if Owen were in the next room.
    “I don’t know if this is the time—”
    Lis touched her sister’s knee. “This thing’s been between us too long. I can’t stand it anymore.”
    “ What’s between us? Lis, this isn’t really the time to have a talk. For heaven’s sake.”
    “I have to talk to you.”
    “Later.”
    “No, now!” Lis said heatedly. “Now! If I don’t do it now, I may never.”
    “And why’s it so important?”
    “Because you have to understand why I said those terrible things to you. And I have to know something from you too. Look at me. Look!”
    “Okay, you told me you were seeing somebody. So what? What does Indian Leap have to do with it?”
    “Oh, Portia . . .”
    Lis must have unknowingly inhaled a huge lungful of air; her chest stung suddenly and she lowered her forehead to her drawn-up knees to ease the pain. In the turbulent silence that flowed between them Lis felt the pain drift away and she lifted her head again to face her sister. As she was about to speak, a faint, not unpleasant roll of thunder filled the room and as it did Portia’s eyes harrowed with understanding. She said, “Oh, no.”
    “Yes,” Lis said. “Yes. My lover was Robert Gillespie.”

28
    “So how long you known the Atchesons?”
    The Jeep driver had a narrow face and gray wattles running down his throat. He downshifted the old vehicle and nursed it up a hill north of downtown Ridgeton, exhaust popping and the gears in agony. The big man next to him was studying the shifting with more interest than the driver thought natural.
    “Years and years I’ve known them,” he said. “Many years.”
    “I know Owen,” the driver said. “Talked to him a few times. We run into each other at Ace Hardware some. A decent sort. For a lawyer.”
    “A hundred years, I’d guess.”
    “Pardon me?”
    “Lis-bone especially.”
    “I didn’t think she pronounced it that way. But you know ’em better’n me, I’d guess.” The Jeep bounded over a rough spot of road. “You’re lucky I come by. Nobody’s out on the streets tonight because of the storm. Those weathermen with their toupees and funny names, they said it’s going to be a pisser of a storm but naw it’s just a little rain is all it is.”
    The big man didn’t respond.
    The Jeep hissed past the intersection of Cedar Swamp and North Street and for a moment the driver thought that he saw someone turn quickly, startled by their passage, and drop over the side of a small hill near the drainage ditch. Simultaneously the sky filled with a huge sphere of lightning and shadows danced every which way. A branch fell nearby. The driver put the apparition down to a freak arrangement of lights and fog and rain. He sped up and followed the winding, uneven course of Cedar Swamp. “Shameful on the part of the county. When’re they going to get around and do it up right? Put some