The Scream

"You knew?" McGraw waited, breathing noisily, a snort.

"What happened to her, mister?" David could feel that terrible tightness in his throat.

"I'm not a doctor," McGraw said.

"Is she all right?"

"I wouldn't say that. Oh, no. But she is alive."

David caught the emphasis on "she." 'You said there was a witness. Were they in the car with her?"

McGraw gave him the sad smirk of a smile. "No, David, you are the witness."

He wondered how that could be and then realized he had in effect confessed to McGraw. He'd been trapped. He had trapped himself. And he was all he cared about. Not the woman. She wasn't a real person to him. She was a scream, like a face he'd brought up on the computer screen.

"I want to see her," he said. What he wanted was to feel her, to flesh-and-blood feel her.

"You could have seen her at the scene. Now it's up to her whether or when she will see you."

"What am I supposed to do, mister?"

"Exactly what I advised you to do yesterday: Go over to the sheriffs office this morning and give Deputy Muller your statement."

"And if I don't?"

"They'll come and get you, David. I can promise you that. The woman will swear out the warrant for your arrest."

And the arrest would be reported in the County Sentinel "Crime Watch." But the woman was alive: Why couldn't he say thank God and mean it? He hated himself for what came into his mind and for saying it, but he did: "What if I asked you to represent me?'

"It's too late for that," McGraw said, sounding regretful.

"You're representing her, aren't you?'

"Such a smart young man. David, would you believe me if I told you I don't wish to represent either of you in a court of law? You will agree surely that you owe the unfortunate woman something simply on the strength of the information we have exchanged here this morning?"

"Isn't this some kind of blackmail, mister?"

"What a dirty word. No, David. I am offering you an honorable solution to something that could be very nasty. It could mess up your life, your career, people knowing you'd run away like that. What I haven't told you till now-the woman was pregnant, David. She miscarried after the accident."

David felt the message like a blow to the stomach. He had trouble getting his breath.

"I think we can call it an accident," McGraw went on, "but in her mind it was murder."

"I'm sorry for her," David said finally, and it wasn't associated with McGraw's mention of murder. It was for something lost.

"Sorrow's too cheap, David. Think about it and after you've seen Deputy Muller, let's talk again. She's a poor, hardworking woman. A settlement would not impoverish your family."

David watched McGraw down the driveway; the coat as he struggled into it swished out like Batman's cape. He tucked it around him as he got behind the wheel of a car marked Sheriffs Office.

The woman was human, David thought, a human being, and the sorrow he felt was for her, not for himself. It was going to be McGraw's word against his, no matter what happened, he reasoned. Not that he was thinking of the lie he could tell to get out of his admission, but he wanted time to think about what he was going to do. He didn't think McGraw would make any move until he had turned himself in, until he signed something saying he had left the scene where someone might have been hurt due to his reckless speed. He was trying to tell himself the truth, the way it was now. In a way, he had hit the woman, and he wanted to go back and pick her up. He couldn't do that, but if he could find her, he could ask her to listen to him, and he could tell her he was sorry. Murder, he felt sure, was McGraw's word. It was meant to scare him. The fu

David knew he needed help. Maybe he did need a lawyer, but he just didn't think so. What he needed first was a private detective, something as remote from his experience as a TV melodrama. What he needed was his father. Not available. He'd recommend a lawyer anyway, and in spite of what his mother had said about David's being able to talk to him, he didn't think his father would be able to listen.

He drove to school and got to see Father Moran in his office. The priest shook hands with him, not the usual start of a student interview. He knew a troubled young person when he saw one. He told David to move his chair so the light wouldn't shine in his face. "I got to thinking after yesterday's brouhaha," the priest said, "one of those what-if questions. What if, after hiding out overnight, Iscariot had showed up at the foot of the cross and said, 'Lord, forgive me.'"

David gri

"I did a bad thing, Father." David told his story, even to having thrown the condom into the wind.

The priest lifted an eyebrow. "Standard equipment," he growled. It was the only comment he made until David was finished. Then, after a few seconds of thought: "And when you find her?"

"I don't know," David said. "I just want her to know I'm sorry for what happened to her."

"Any decent lawyer would advise you against self-incrimination." "I don't care!" David all but shouted.

"By the grace of God, I'm not a lawyer," the priest said. He took the phone book from the bottom drawer of his desk. "Let's start with the nearest hospital to where this misfortune occurred."

Within the half-hour, he had the name and an address for Alice Moss. When she hemorrhaged with the miscarriage, she had taken herself back to St. Vincent's Hospital. It was where she worked, on the custodial staff.

"If you didn't hear me scream," the woman said after she'd thought about it, "how were you going to hear if something else happened to me?"

"I don't think I wanted to hear anything," David said.

Mrs. Moss scraped a bit of congealed egg from the table with her thumbnail. They sat in the hospital employees' cafeteria, where midafternoon traffic was light. She did not in any way resemble the face behind the scream. Her salt-and-pepper hair hung in a clamp at the back of her head. Her eyes were tired. She seemed confused, slow, but her question was on the mark. She twisted uncomfortably on the metal chair. "I don't like you coming to me like this," she said. "I'd just as soon never know you."

"I'm sorry," David said.

"You said that already and I believe you're telling the truth. But I think you're sorry over something I'm not real sure I feel the same way about. That lawyer got me all confused, telling me how I feel when I don't feel that way at all." She concentrated on ST. MARYS COLLEGE, the lettering on the breast of his sweater. "David-Mr. Crowley…"

"David's fine," he said.

"I'm not saying what I want to say, and maybe I should keep it to myself." She drew a deep breath and looked at him directly. "I didn't want to have a baby at all, but I'm a church person and I felt I had to go through with it. Mind, I could have been killed myself last night, I know that…"

"I do too," David said.

"And maybe that would have been murder, but I still couldn't call the other thing murder. I was thinking when I came back to work this noon: Wasn't I lucky on both counts?"

Before the next Christian Ethics class David told Father Moran about his meeting in the hospital cafeteria.

"Did she forgive you?"

"I think so."

"You're lucky, my lad," the priest said. They reached the classroom door. "I have a word of advice for you, Crowley. One word…" He waited.

'Yes, Father?"

"Abstinence."