Donald E. Westlake

Pity Him Afterwards

to Mel and Nedra

If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.

Samuel Johnson

The madman clung to the side of the hill, hidden by darkness and trees. Staring over his left shoulder he could see the lights in pairs crossing the bottom of the night, round whites when coming aslant, red dots when going. Only the circling red light atop the state police car did not move on, across the valley floor and out of sight. The ambulance had gone now, and the traffic jam had been broken up, but the state police car did not move on.

The hillface was steep here, furred with spring grass. Below was a dark mass of trees, and more trees above, but here on this steep band across the hill there was only grass. The ground was soft and moist.

It was the night of the new moon, so the stars had the cloudless sky to themselves. The madman, clinging to the side of the hill, was a darker mass against the ground. His fingers were dug into the earth and he kept looking over his left shoulder. The suitcase was on the ground beside him.

Down below him, past the trees, he could see the headlights going by. He was waiting for the state police car with the circling red light to go on, to go away with the rest of the lights, and then he could move. But the state police car didn’t go away.

And now more red lights came, borne on the stream of headlights. The madman reared up, almost losing his balance and rolling down the hill, and stared in hatred at the revolving red lights. Three more of them, all stopping by the first. Dimly amid the lights he could see men moving, and then a different kind of light appeared. A small nailhole of light in the darkness. Flashlights. Men with flashlights crossed the road down there and started up the hill, spreading out, opening like a fan. He lost sight of them all in the trees, and saw there a flicker of light, and there. And there.

They were coming after him.

The madman put his head down on the ground, his burning forehead against the cool dampness of the turf. Despair washed over him. Just after dinner he’d broken out, and before midnight he was to be caught again. They would make him scream for this, the shock every day, death and rebirth every day, going down and away to spasmodic shrieks and coming back to twitches and deafness and the cold blue eyes of Doctor Chax. (There was no Doctor Chax; all the doctors were Doctor Chax; all the doctors had the cold blue eyes and the warm brown voices, and told him while they tortured him that the torture was for his own good; he had made up the name, Doctor Chax. It was all of them.)

Voices wafted up the hill to him on the cool air. The turf was cool against his forehead. Voices wafted up, and the blundering of men upward through the trees.

He raised his head. He stared upward, toward the top of the hill, crowned with more trees. His eyes shone just slightly in the starlight.

He would not

go back to Doctor Chax. He would not.

He pulled his left leg up, and then his right. Moved his left hand forward, and then his right. On hands and knees, and then upward to his feet, leaning forward into the slant of the hill. He took three staggering steps upward, always teetering just short of falling backward down the hill toward the flickering flashlights down under the trees. Then he remembered the suitcase, still lying where he’d left it, three paces back. He shook his head heavily from side to side, grimacing and growling in exasperation, and, bent far forward, thudded his fists against the turf.

There was nothing for it but to go back. The suitcase was necessity.

He scrambled back down to the suitcase and grabbed it in his right hand. He glared quickly downslope, saw the flashlights closer, nearly to the upper limit of the trees, and growled deep in his throat. (He wouldn’t talk to the doctors, and couldn’t talk to the other patients, and there was no one else to talk to. He’d gotten the habit of talking to himself, but mainly silently, in his head, with only grunts and growls coming to the surface, a mannerism common among men who live alone or work alone. It was not a symptom of his madness, but of his solitude.)

He clambered up the steep slope now like a crippled spider, dragging the suitcase. He hurried as fast as he could go, panting noisily; four years of sedentary life in the asylum had left him out of shape for running.