Rated:PG
Feedback: Comments welcome at tunecedemalis@yahoo.com
Author’s Notes: The title is from a poem by Robert Frost.
The episodes in question are The Black Widow, Never My Love, and Do Not Go Gentle.
Autumn-1983
There was nothing really new about waking up in a cold sweat-it just hadn’t happened in a while. How long a while? A month, maybe, tops? The last cycle had been in the wake of Flip Johnson’s death--a weird mixture of grief and anger, brought to a boil by a couple of nights in the L.A. Central Jail.
McCormick sat up, wiped his face on the sheet, and hunched over his bent knees. So, why now? He frowned, trying to bring the dream back up to the surface. Might have been when they’d handed him a shovel and told him to start digging his and Tina’s grave.
Maybe.
He stared out the window and into the night, thinking he really ought to lie back down and get some sleep. Mornings came damn early on the Hardcastle plantation. But he was already pushing the covers off, and reaching for the pair of sweats he’d dropped on the floor. No use trying again too soon; it’ll just be back. This was the calm voice of long experience talking to him now, the one that knew that a day of exhaustion was better than a night of terror.
He slipped on his loafers, and fumbled in the dark for the back of the chair where he’d hung his jacket. The clock read two thirty-seven. He shook his head in self-disgust, and descended the stairs. There were several approaches he’d tried in the past. Beer was not the solution. It only seemed to make things more confusing. Nor was coffee, though he was pretty sure he’d need some in the morning, the way things were going.
The estate did offer one option that he hadn’t had in the lock-up, or at San Quentin, where the natural limit of walking was four steps in each direction. He fumbled again, this time with the latch on the door, and he stepped out into the cool night, taking a deep breath. The breeze was off the ocean, and it stirred the trees and carried the distant sound of the breakers.
He’d have to pass the main house to get to the beach, but it was dark and, at this time of night, it was unlikely that he’d be noticed. And what the hell would be so wrong about going for a walk at night?
As long as you don’t have to explain why.
The judge turned over for perhaps the twentieth time since midnight, when he’d finally put the book down and turned off the light. This is crazy. You never have trouble sleeping. Well, not often. Not recently.
He sat up, but didn’t reach for the light. That would be admitting defeat. The clock said two forty-three. He supposed he could get up and shoot a few baskets. Except that’ll wake up McCormick. Yeah, and so? It’s your house. Your hoop.
And he’ll ask why the hell you aren’t asleep.
He would, too. Damn kid would ask anything. Wouldn’t take ‘none of your business’ for an answer, either. How the hell did that happen? None of the rest of ‘em were like that.
Hardcastle stepped into his sneakers and stood up slowly, stretching a little and reaching for his robe. The wind had picked up. He watched it toss the tree branches from side to side like a dog with a bone, and then he caught a glimpse of some other movement, further away and at ground level. Prowlers? He stepped over to the window.
Just one and it was McCormick, hands in the pockets of his jacket, moving furtively by the house toward the backyard.
Furtively? All right, there was nothing particularly furtive about it, except that it was almost three a.m. He was just walking.
Then kid was around the corner of the house and out of sight. The judge sat down on the seat in the window alcove, still half-turned toward the outside, but seeing nothing else of interest. Hardcastle frowned. It had been kind of a rough day, with Mark winding up almost shot by Joe Bieber. Maybe he’d been more shook up than he’d admitted. God knows he’d been a little worried himself. That kid means something to me. That’s what he’d said to Filapiano.
He supposed he might go down there and shoot some baskets after all. Mark couldn’t help but pass by him on his return. But still there’d be that question; McCormick would ask it first, before he could get his own out, ‘Why the hell aren’t you asleep?’
He leaned up against the side of the alcove, watched the wind-tossed trees, and waited.
It was nearly four when he saw McCormick return, hair tousled and hands still in his pockets. The younger man paused near the house and looked up. Hardcastle leaned a little back from the window and froze, suspecting he was nearly invisible in the darkness of the room. And a moment later the kid dropped his gaze back down and continued on toward the gate house. Hardcastle shrugged and exhaled, and found his own way back to bed.
He thought he’d seen a little movement in the upstairs window, though God knows why. He’d stopped and looked up for a moment and, seeing nothing more, walked on. He was more tired than before, but no more likely to rest. But now, at least, it was only two more hours till Hardcastle’s version of morning.
Autumn-1984
Okay, enough of this, he thought, wiping his face and sitting up in tense exhaustion. The sweat was cold now, but in the dream it had been the natural consequence of the crematorium furnace’s stifling heat. He sat there in bed until his breathing was normal again.
Three-fifteen. Well, good, only three hours to kill. The judge would undoubtedly want him up and at ‘em bright and early to get the mulching done. Two, three more days and he’d get back to normal, after all, he’d joked with the judge when he and Cyndy’d finally been freed from that hellish container.
Normal? Hah. That’ll be the day. In the meantime, he knew what to do. Sometimes it even worked. He leaned over and picked up the first loafer.
Hardcastle was sitting in the alcove, the lights off. He’d given up an hour ago, but at least sitting in the dark was less of an admission of defeat than going down to the kitchen and making coffee.
This one had been close. Who are you kidding? They’re all close. A minute, two minutes more and they would have been dead. Burned alive. A little later still, and there wouldn’t have even been any remains.
Ashes to ashes.
He shuddered. McCormick had made some smart remark when the lid had finally been opened, but it was a thin layer of bravado over palpable terror.
And then it was off to bust the bad guy. Nothing more to say about it at all.
Well, that’s how he wants it, I guess.
He saw the movement below and followed the progress of the man as he passed the house and headed for the path to the beach. Hardcastle glanced toward the clock-three-thirty. He supposed he might put on some sweats and take a stroll himself but . . . maybe he wants to be alone.
Or maybe you wouldn’t know what to say.
You could ask him if he’s okay.
And then he’ll ask you.
The judge stayed stone-still until the younger man was out of sight. Then he let out a breath and leaned back again. An hour, maybe a little more. He’d wait.
Autumn-1985
After three days, he was beginning to think he preferred the nightmares to no sleep at all. By day, of course, they moved through their paces, the judge appearing to be a tower of strength, and Mark doing everything in his power not to topple that illusion.
How much time left? And when it came down to a few days, or a few hours, how much would he regret all the parts of it he’d spent doing the ordinary routines of living, while the judge was dying.
You can’t go five months without sleep. He shook his head and sat up. All right, but you aren’t getting back to sleep tonight.
He knew the drill.
You’d think that having some kinda lethal blood disease would make a guy tired.
Hardcastle frowned at the pain-in-the-ass injustice of it. On top of which, if he got up and turned any lights on, the kid would be over here in a New York second, to make sure he was still okay. And no amount of patient reassurance was gonna change that.
So, when did he become the guy who worries about you?
He shook his head. It’d been that way for a while now. Maybe worse, though, since Weed Randall, but the seeds of it were there long before.
And when did you become the guy who worries about him?
He smiled a little. No telling that--maybe right from the start. God knows, there was plenty to worry about.
Not any more.
The smile turned into a frown as he caught sight of a familiar figure, silver pale in the moonlight, coming round past the house, obviously walking toward the beach.
Well, except for the part where he seems to have given up sleeping.
This was the third night in a row. Hardcastle stood up from his seat in the alcove. He’d never gotten around to getting undressed, anyway. He moved with intent assurance through the hallway and down the stairs, and stepped out through the back door. The kid had just turned round the corner and looked up in surprise at the interception.
“Ah,” Mark fumbled, “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Hardcastle looked down at himself, then up at the kid. “Do I look like I was asleep?”
Mark managed to combine worried with sheepish as he answered, “No, not really.” And then he added, “I was just going for a walk.”
They were, both of them, past the point of needing to ask the other question. They both knew, beyond a doubt, why the hell they weren’t asleep.
Mark cocked his head in the direction of the beach and said, “Do you wanna come?”
“Yeah,” the judge said quietly, “I do.”
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