The Captive by Robert Stallman Read Free Book Online Page A

you spout that innocent shit while the Chicago Limited is coming down the track." He reared back, letting go of the hand, his face disappearing as he leaned away from the light.
    "Whoooooooeee!" he roared. "Right down the track!"
    Barry thought about walking out and looked around the bar, but no one was taking any notice. What could he say to this maniac? Did he have to feel sorry for the husband to complete the act of adultery? The square white face  descended again into the light, this legal husband. Barry watched the husband's drunken rage creating itself, each muscle pulling into place to make a scowl of hate. In a  second or two he will try to attack, probably fall on his face, Barry thought, and I will drive him home. Or was he less drunk than he seemed?
    And then things began to move. Hegel stood up, knocking his head on the hanging light, reached for Barry with both hands, his mouth twisted, teeth bared like a vicious dog. The smaller man knocked aside the drunken grasp and swung a long punch from out in the aisle. It hit Bill Hegel high on the cheek, smacking him into the wall so that his head hit with a solid crack, and he slid down limply into the booth. The light over the table swung back and forth, his white, helpless face moving in and out of the glare. Barry pulled him upright, laid him across the table and looked up to catch the bartender standing tense in the bright lights behind the bar.
    "You have to do that?" he said. One hand was beneath the bar holding something.
    "We're old buddies," Barry said. "Last time he hauled me home."
    "I thought he had too much," the bartender said. He didn't want to be involved. "He usually does," he said grinning.
    "I'll take him home to Renee," Barry said, hauling at the big man. He got one arm over his shoulder and got a grip on Bill's belt with his other hand. "She'll know what to do," he said, giving the bartender a wink as he staggered by.
    Hegel was a big brute, and Barry wished as he sweated in the late afternoon sun trying to stuff the man into the back seat of the old Chevrolet that he could shift and let the Beast toss him into the car like a sack of feed. And then driving the unfamiliar old car with the big wooden steering wheel he wondered at his care of this fool. It would be easy to park somewhere until nightfall, drive the car onto the  railroad tracks at some lonely crossing, let the train simplify things - Hegel's own idea, after all. And then Barry could step into his place as Renee's husband, live a real life. A shiver of pleasure ran over him as the plan in its practical simplicity began to appeal to that pragmatic power inside him. But there was also the utter wrongness of that act, the human feeling that was at this point stronger than these deeper promptings. How easy it would be, and yet Barry would not consent to such an act. The satisfactions of newly wakened love were too close, too overwhelming as he  remembered them. He felt a new tenderness, a gathering  heroism that was almost like a kid might feel for his first girl, a knighthood sort of feeling. It felt like a weakness. It was too sudden for him to make the decision that would remove this man from his life. The morality of the thing has to be considered, Barry thought, waiting for a traffic light. It was only some minutes later that he realized he had turned left instead of right, that he was heading out of town instead of toward Hegel's house. Perhaps there was time to think about this before he committed himself, and incidentally this unconscious man, to an irrevocable fact. He felt inside  himself the ruminations of that power and its direct course to what it wanted. It wanted what Barry wanted, the love of the woman, for whatever obscure reasons such a creature might have. A widow was much easier to marry than a wife, it seemed to say. We will do this together, it seemed to say, but Barry pushed against it, trying to think for himself.
    It is true , he thought, clear headed for the