hated him. The more he followed us the madder I got. But suddenly, in
Barstow, everything changed. I felt sorry for him. And that made it
possible for me to love him again. All of a sudden he was a human being
like the rest of us, and miserable over my unhappiness ... trying so
hard to save us both, as he saw it. And he stood to lose even the little
love I still felt for him. It was a brave thing he did. A little stupid
but brave. I didn’t know that before.” He took a bite from the red
winesap in his hand.
“When Dad caught up with us, another crazy thing happened. I felt closer
to Sunny; more like a husband and less like a brother.”
“Why haven’t you told the Rothelis who you are, Page?” Laura asked,
huddling close to the men so the strangers in the waiting room couldn’t
eavesdrop.
“I will when Sunny’s all right,” Page said. “They should know the
truth.” His jaw hardened and he stopped chewing his apple.
“You’re right,” Jack said shrewdly. “That’s the way to get even with
them.”
“Get _even_? That’s a lousy way to put it.”
“Why, hell, man, they gave you away when you were a baby, didn’t they?”
Jack said, and Laura understood at once what he was trying to do. “They
made you suffer, didn’t they? All these years you’ve been miserable
because you didn’t know who you were. And what were they doing? Living
comfortably and forgetting all about poor little Roger. What the hell,
they have Chuckie now.”
“Jack, that’s a pretty rotten attitude,” Page said stiffly. He didn’t
recognize his own undressed desire for vengeance. He had always hidden
it under the robes of justice and retribution, and it had looked so
noble. Now it was parading in Jack’s words like a heartless whore on a
streetcorner.
“It’s a perfectly reasonable attitude,” Jack said with mock chagrin.
“They ought to know what they did to you. They ought to suffer a little
themselves. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“Well, they _did_ suffer,” Page said uncertainly.
“But that was years ago!”
“Jack, you’re making it sound like—”
“No news yet!” Laura broke in, in an over-bright voice, and Page shut up
as June and Ben rejoined them. They sat down next to their tense son,
who glowered in silence at his old roommate. Jack, afraid Page in this
temper would blurt out the truth, suggested the two of them go out for a
drink. It was a chance to patch things up again before they got out of
hand.
Page refused at once, but everybody insisted.
“Go over to Jocko’s, why don’t you?” Laura said. “It’s only a block
away. I’ll call if anything happens.”
Jack hauled Page, resisting nervously, down the main hall.
“God damn it, Jack, they’ll come to get me and I won’t be here,” he
said. “They’ll have to tell Sunny I’m out getting swacked with a
drinking buddy. What will she think?”
“She’ll think old Jack did the right thing and got you out of
everybody’s hair for half an hour,” Jack grinned.
* * * * *
It was late afternoon, pearly light and mild. Jack hustled his charge
along for a block and turned him into Jocko’s. He ordered two double dry
martinis and after a circumspect silence, put a hand on Page’s shoulder.
“Take it easy boy,” he said. “I had no business being so rough on you
then. You’ve got enough on your mind.”
Page, in his befogged state, had forgotten his gripe. “What? Oh, sure,”
he said, lighting a cigarette and singeing a finger in the process.
“God,” he murmured. “She’s got to be all right.”
“Women are a lot tougher than they look,” Jack said kindly.
Page wiped his sweaty forehead with a damp handkerchief and made Jack
chuckle. “If there ever was a nervous young father, Page, you’re it,” he
said.
“If there ever was a father with good _reason_ to be nervous, I’m it
too,” Page countered.
When the drinks came he emptied half his glass. Jack watched him a
moment and said, “I have something on my mind that I probably should
have told you sooner. Only things have been so unsettled—”
“I’m too far gone for confessions right now,” Page said.
“You ought to know this, though,” Jack insisted. “I met your
step-father.”
“You did?” Page turned to look at him with an interested stare. “How did
that happen? Did you call him up?”
“No, he called me. In fact he came over and had dinner with us.”
“He did? For God’s sake,” Page said. “How did he know who you were?”
“I didn’t ask him. The Rothelis, or maybe you mentioned us.”
“What did he want?” Page asked.
“Do you know anybody named Winkler?”
“Winkler? No. What is this, Jack?”
“Think hard. Anybody?”
“Some remote cousins of Mother’s have that name, I think. But I don’t
know them personally.”
That was enough for Jack. He ran a wet finger around the edge of his
martini glass until it sang.
“Your father told us his name was Winkler,” Jack said. “I wondered where
he picked up the name. He stayed till five in the morning.”
Page frowned. “What the hell did he do that for?”
“I guess he wanted us to reassure him. He’d just gotten back from
California and he felt as if he’d failed with you. He wanted to know
your whole story from A to Z, as if he’d never heard it. He wanted to
know if you’d leave Sunny, and if you’d forgive him for interfering the
way he did.”
“He asked you all that?”
“Not directly. He didn’t want us to know who he was. Just said he had
run into you in Barstow and thought you were a nice young couple. And
you told him to look us up.”
“The old son of a gun,” Page said, shaking his head with amazement. “He
must have been damn worried to do such a thing. It’s not like him.”
“I didn’t think so,” Jack smiled. “I hadn’t been talking very long
before I got the picture. He carried it off pretty well, but when he
asked questions you could tell the main thing he cared about was how a
father and son should get along. And whether a moral man could tolerate
incest.”
“How did he take it?”
“Well, some of it hurt, all right. But he showed guts. He heard me out.
Now and then, when it got bad, he asked the things he had to know, but
he didn’t condemn you. Or me, either.”
“Did he tell you who he was before he left?”
“No. He got a bit flustered. Wouldn’t let me call him for fear I’d find
out his real name. I’m still supposed to think he’s ‘Mr. Winkler’. Laura
never did catch on, by the way. Shall I tell her?”
“If you want to. I trust you two.”
“You don’t feel bitter about him now, do you?” Jack said.
“Not any more. There was so much love for us in all his bungling. Maybe
it’s a good thing in a way that he did it. It made me realize how much I
mean to him after all these years.”
“Why don’t you call him? He doesn’t even know you’re back,” Jack said.
“Sure,” Page said, looking at Jack as if it had just occurred to him. He
left his bar stool and went to the pay phone in the back of the bar.
When he returned Jack had ordered another round.
“He was pretty relieved,” Page reported. “So was Mother. I don’t know
what you said to him, Jackson, but I don’t think he feels as bad about
things as he did. He may never approve of us—Sunny said that once—but I
don’t think he’ll fight it any more.”
“Good.”
“And I called the hospital,” Page said. “It’s still going on. Ben says
they haven’t heard any more.”
“Well, bottoms up,” Jack said judiciously. “We’ll finish this one and
head back. You can tell me what happened on the desert.”
“You in a mood for horror stories?” Page said with an ironic grin.
17
Pringle’s unexpected visit in Barstow had taken the sparkle out of the
beautiful morning. Suddenly Page and Sunny noticed it was very hot and
dry. They didn’t talk about Pringle, with a tacit understanding that it
would only have led to lower spirits and perhaps a fight.
“Come on,” Page said, leading her out to the rented dark blue Ford. He
backed out toward the highway.
“Let’s do something fun,” Sunny said. “Let’s go see something
interesting.”
“What’s to see, sweetheart?”
She had taken a travel guide map from the glove compartment and was
studying the territory. They drove along while Sunny mentioned various
oddities marked on the map; old mines, great dry lakes, craters. Page
dismissed them all as tourist traps.
“Darling, let’s get off this dreary highway and see _something_,” Sunny
pleaded. “This is supposed to be a honeymoon. Don’t let your father ruin
this, too.”
“Okay, honey, you win,” he said half-heartedly. “What’s the next stop on
the map?”
“Amboy Crater,” she said. “And Bristol Dry Lake.” He made a face.
“Well, it says ‘Point of Interest’ on the map,” she said.
With a sigh he turned south off Route 66 at Amboy, a scarcely noticeable
desert town, and went a mile or two to the crater. Sunny made him stop
so she could get out and look.
The crater loomed, black and ancient, in a plateau of iron-hard rock,
all of it weather-cracked, split, and dried like a diseased sea. It
spread out for miles, rising about six feet above the desert floor, and
all around the edges dead black fingers of lava rock probed the sand.
“Just think, it came out of that crater once, like the sea in hell,”
Sunny said, awed.
“Gives me the creeps,” Page told her. “Come on, let’s find something
cheerful.”
“How about the Dry Lake? It’s only half a mile further,” she said.
It was not much to see. Not as dramatic and eerie as the old crater.
Just miles of flat, dry, hard-baked mud. They got off the road and drove
around on it for a while.
“Make a good race-track,” Page commented. “Gosh, it’s big.”
“Only about eight miles long on the map,” Sunny said. But when she
looked up it seemed as if they were completely surrounded by cracked
mud. It was all one could see in four directions, except way out in the
crystal distance where the violet mountains rose.
“I wonder if anything lives out here?” Sunny asked.
“Nothing with any sense,” he said. “Had enough?” And he turned the car
around.
“Where are our tracks?” Sunny said, peering over the hood.
“You don’t make tracks on this stuff, it’s like so much cement.”
They drove a little farther. “We’re kind of low on gas, aren’t we?”
Sunny said, glancing at the meter.
“It’s not far, honey, just a couple of miles. We’ll make it.”
“We ought to be back on that road by now. I’m afraid we’ve gone past
it,” Sunny fretted.
Page had not realized how low the gas was, as a matter of fact,
preoccupied as he was with his father. Sunny fell silent, trusting him.
But ten minutes later Page began to notice that the terrain looked
different. It was not as smooth as the lake bed. Rocks and clumps of
tough weeds studded the ground. He figured he had enough gas for another
ten or twelve miles, and glanced at Sunny beside him in the front seat.
She was sweating freely, but she didn’t look frightened.
Suddenly a sharp report jolted the front of the car. Page stopped as
fast as he could and leaped out to see the damage. He looked under the
hood and abruptly fell to his knees at the side of the car, trying to
wrench a hub cap off. Sunny heard him banging and leaned out his window.
“Can I help?” she said.
“The keys!” He grabbed them from her hand and opened the trunk, coming
forward quickly with a lug wrench. But he was too late.
Mystified, Sunny said, “What’s the matter, darling?”
“It’s all right,” he said, but his face was worried.
He sat down in the driver’s seat, trying to wipe the wrinkles off his
forehead. “Damnedest thing. I guess we hit a loose rock. Bounced up and
struck the fan and bent one of the blades.”
“Is that bad?”
“I’m afraid so, honey. The blade sheared the radiator tubing. We’ve lost
all our water. I was hoping to catch some of it in the hub cap.”
“What can we do?” She was more scared than she wanted him to know. The
desert is haunted with ghastly tales of the uninformed and unprepared.
“I guess we can drive a way without it,” Page said. “We can’t be more
than half a mile from that road.” And yet he knew that at some point
they had driven out of the lake, and God only knew where they were now.
He prayed they weren’t going around in a fatal, sandy circle.
Resolutely he started up again. There was no road, no sign, no hut, no
human being. Nothing but bigger rocks and softer sand.
The sand, in fact, was becoming treacherous to drive on. Inevitably, the
car gave a mushy jolt and began to slow down.
“Is the gas gone?” Sunny said.
“No. Damn sand,” he muttered. As he spoke the car sank to a standstill.
Page gunned the motor a few times and cut it off. “No sense wasting
what’s left,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Darling,
don’t be afraid. We’re so close to civilization, we can’t go too far
wrong.”
“We _were_ close,” she said.
He squeezed her knee and then got out. “You stay there and try not to
sweat,” he told her. “I never let my pregnant wives pull the plow.”
But his cheerful mood faded rapidly. He labored in the unblinking sun
for almost two hours, digging tracks under the wheels, shoving while
Sunny tried to back out, creating traction out of bath towels and
deflated tires.
“Worse than shoveling maple syrup,” he gasped to Sunny, tearing the
shirt off his hot back. The air he was inhaling so hard felt like steam
in his lungs. By the time they got out of the hole he was trembling with
heat and fatigue.
“Move over, sweetheart, let’s get out of here,” he said, sliding into
the driver’s seat.
“On half a gallon of gas?” she said. “Besides, all the sand looks the
same. You can’t tell the soft from the hard.”
“We’ll try another direction,” he said, heading in what he judged was a
northerly route. “I think this will have us back on 66 in no time.” He
could sense that she wanted to believe him, and he fell silent, afraid
anything more he might say would only scare her. He felt his limbs
quaking and his heart working overtime, and he didn’t know what he would
do if they got stuck again.
“You’re awfully tired, darling, I can tell,” Sunny said softly.
“I’m not in shape for pushing cars across the desert,” he cracked. He
was painfully thirsty. She must be, too.
The ground became progressively rougher, with big outcroppings of rock
here and there. Through them Page threaded a cautious trail. Sunny
studied the map.
“It shows rocks for a hundred miles in all directions,” she said. “We
could be just about anywhere.”
“That’s a big help.”
“I thought you said we were going back to 66,” she said.
“Well, I think we are, sweetheart. But I’m not sure.”
“Oh, Page,” she whispered and he took her hand and held it hard, trying
to encourage her. “At least the sun’s going down,” she said bravely. “It
won’t be so hot.”
Then the engine coughed and there was a grinding wrench along the
underside of the car. Page stopped and opened the door in almost the
same motion. He dropped to his knees in the sand and slid under the
motor to see what had happened. Moments later he emerged, dusty and
splattered. Sunny didn’t dare ask him what he had found.
“Well, we’ve run over a goddam rock,” he said angrily. “There’re so many
after a while you just don’t notice them.”
“It can’t be too bad,” she said hopefully.
“No. It just pierced the crankcase housing, that’s all.”
“Can you fix it?” Her voice was small and scared.
“All the oil has poured out. Also, the motor’s had it, without water.
I’m afraid this buggy is finished,” he said. He spoke matter-of-factly,
but for the first time since he realized they were lost, he was
genuinely frightened.
Wearily he climbed up on the seat beside her. “We shouldn’t have rented
this car, we should have bought it,” he said. “At least we could collect
the insurance.”
She burst into tears. “Page,” she wept, and he took her in his arms.
“What will we do?”
“Rest. And save our strength. Did we bring anything to eat? Or drink?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Not one crumb. And I even thought of asking you to
pick up a six-pack of beer in that lunch place.”
They thought about the cold wet beer for a moment and then he said with
a vigor he didn’t feel, “In the morning I’m going to try to walk back.”
“And leave me here in this wilderness?” she cried, terrified. “Darling,
you’ll get lost. We might be fifty miles from the road.” She clung to
him in a panic, but he only held her, unwilling to give up the idea.
Hungry, thirsty, exhausted, they huddled together in the car while the
vast world of hot rocks and sand around them began to cool.
“Let’s try to sleep,” he said. “Here, honey, get in the back seat and
lie down. You can use that blanket in your bag.”
“I’d rather have an air conditioner,” she said. “What about you,
darling? Where will you sleep?”
“Under the car, I guess,” he said, covering her.
“Aren’t there snakes?” she asked.
“If there are, they’re cooked.” He took her hand. “I’ll be all right,
sweetheart. You go to sleep.”
She lay in the uncomfortably short back seat and tried to rest, while
Page sat up for a while, wondering how to get them out of there. His
overpowering worry was Sunny. How well could she bear up under that
deadly sun?
Before he crawled under the car to sleep he leaned into the back seat
and kissed her face tenderly. “Darling,” he whispered. “My love. Sleep
tight.”
* * * * *
At the first sign of light Page sat up to watch the dawn. It was warm,
with the temperature near ninety. The sun came out early, climbing up
the sides of the distant hills. It surprised Page when he first saw the
brightening sky. He had expected the sun from another direction. Sunny
awoke in time to see his consternation.
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“The sun ... the damn thing does come up in the east, doesn’t it?”
“Ordinarily.” She stared at him.
“Then we’re headed west,” he said. “_Not_ north. Back to L. A. God! If
we keep on going pretty soon we’ll reach the ocean.”
“Or a lemonade stand,” she said wistfully.
He smiled at her. “You’re a good girl, Sunny,” he said. He spoke with
such love that she bent and kissed his hair as he sat on the ground. His
neck was scarlet and throbbing hot.
“Page, you got burned yesterday,” she said with concern.
“Not bad,” he lied. But his scalded skin had been robbed of water and
oil, and from neck to waist he was a painful red.
Sunny lifted her head and gazed around the sand. “What are we going to
do?” she asked.
“We’re going to get out of this damn oven,” he said, thumping the rear
fender as he shoved himself to his feet. “Before it bakes us to a turn.”
She climbed out and shook herself carefully.
“How do you feel?” He was hyper-conscious of her condition.
“I’m all right, darling,” she said. She couldn’t start the day by
telling him how thirsty and faint she was. She felt a kick in her
abdomen and was momentarily overwhelmed with an uprush of love and
anguish for the poor little creature she was carrying. Her fate was his.
She would want to die if the baby didn’t live.
Page took her hand and led her to an outcropping of rock some forty
yards from the car. The short walk made her tired. He settled her there,
spreading the electric blanket under her to keep her off the sand, and
sat down beside her.
“We ought to have some shade here for most of the morning,” he said,
squinting at the high-rising rock. “In the afternoon we can move around
to the other side.”
“What do we do at noon?” she said.
“We fry,” he answered briefly. He scanned the area with tightly narrowed
eyes, standing up to look around. He couldn’t sit there on that sand and
wait for the world to come rescue him. He had to do something.
In less than an hour they heard the buzz of a plane.
“God damn! Of course! I should have thought of that,” he cried, running
back to the car. He wrenched the rear view mirror off its bracket and
jumped out, holding the mirror toward the sun. A series of bright
flashes resulted, but the plane, cruising over twenty thousand feet in
that mountainous country, proceeded eastward indifferently.
Sunny discovered a package of gum in her purse and when Page came
dejectedly back with the mirror, she shared it with him. It took them
some time to soften it in their dry mouths, but the sugar tasted
wonderful. Page took only one stick.
Sunny saved the rest. “Three sticks of Doublemint,” she said. “All our
worldly goods. It makes me feel like crying.” The tears began to fall,
and Page put his arms around her.
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, ashamed of herself. “I guess it was
seeing that plane. Those people up there, so cool and comfortable.
Eating a big breakfast and looking out the window at all the damn
rocks.”
“There must be a lot of air traffic around here,” Page said. “Hell, the
big army bases, the commercial flights, private parties. I’m going to
pile up a mess of stuff in that clear space in front of the car and the
next time one goes over I’ll light it. Maybe it’ll fire up bright enough
to catch somebody’s eye. I’ll have to use your clothes, honey. Okay?”
“Anything,” she said. She leaned back weakly against the rock shelf. It
was hot in the shadow, the temperature rising steadily through the
nineties. She looked at her watch: not quite nine A.M. Where will we be
when it’s nine in the evening? she wondered. Oh, God, please save us.
All three of us.
Page spent the next hour building a pyre out of their suitcases, their
clothes, and a spare tire from the trunk. Afterward he found the towels
he had used to get the wheels out of the sand and made an S with them.
He walked over to Sunny and squatted beside her, wiping his sweaty face
with a grimy cloth. “Sunny, I need the blanket,” he said.
“What for?” she asked, rolling off it without protest.
“I’m making an S O S in the sand over there. If they see the fire,
they’ll come low enough to read the letters.”
He took out the pen knife he carried in his change pocket and, with
Sunny’s help, cut the blanket into several strips. Sunny held it taut
while Page sawed through the material.
“That should do it,” Page said a half-hour later, gathering up the long
wool streamers and heading for the S made of towels. Sunny started to
follow him but a sudden hard cramp sent her back to the ground.
For fifteen minutes, while Page worked on the distress signal she sat
motionless, paralyzed with the pain. Her instinct recognized it. She had
never had a baby before, but she knew that she had just had a labor
pain.
She leaned against the rock, grateful for the shade, and told herself,
_I will be calm_, over and over. Maybe it will go away. The books talk
about false labor. I’ll sit here and take it easy.... If that little
mite comes out here, it won’t live five minutes.
It didn’t occur to her that she wouldn’t, either. Her whole being
revolved around that baby. Sunny had a lot of sense and a great desire
to save her child. She forced herself to lie down on the sand and remain
quiet. Time passed, one straggling second at a time, but the cramp did
not repeat itself.
When Page came back she told him nothing.
“That’s it, darling,” he said. “Save yourself.”
“You, too,” she murmured. “Lie down, Page.”
He sat instead. They were both stunned with the sky-rocketing heat.
“How hot do you think it is?” Sunny asked. Little streams of sweat were
trickling into her ears and down her breasts and arms.
“Seems hotter if you talk about it.” He scanned the shiny blue sky,
shading his eyes with his left hand.
Page estimated it was well over a hundred degrees by then, but didn’t
tell her so. “There might be some moisture left in the radiator,” he
said. “Give me your hanky, I’ll soak it up.”
“If there is, it’ll be hot enough to brew coffee,” she said.
Page left her briefly. The heat pierced the soles of his shoes and
traveled up his legs like shock waves, and the sun felt hot enough to
melt his hair. He returned on shaky limbs with a pitiful small dampness.
“Suck on it,” he told Sunny. “It’s all there was.” He stroked her
cracking lips with it. They had not eaten or drunk now for twenty-four
hours.
Sunny would have insisted on sharing the moisture with him had it not
been for that cramp. Now she felt an obligation to be selfish.
Shortly another plane began to drone toward them. Sunny sat halfway up,
searching the sky.
“There it is,” she said. “Quick, light the fire.”
“Too high,” he said, shaking his head. “Probably a jet.”
Sunny lay down as the plane passed, too faint to lower herself
carefully. Page watched her drop back with worried eyes. He knelt and
wiped her forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. The rising heat made
her face pink, but it was not a healthy color.
“I might find a little water in these rocks somewhere,” he said. “There
are mineral springs in the desert sometimes.”
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, frightened. Her worst fear was to die
abandoned on the sand.
“I’ll just go a short way and whistle so you’ll know where I am,” he
promised. “Darling, I’ve got to try something. You need that water. It
isn’t ten-thirty yet.” He didn’t need to remind her of her empty stomach
or the dry fuzz forming on her tongue.
After a tired struggle with herself she said, “Keep whistling.”
“I will.” He kissed her, bending over her with his hands planted in the
sand. His burned lips scratched her skin lightly. Then he got up and
walked. In twelve minutes he was back.