I thought I heard him call, the sound mingling with the noise of the
river. I followed Antoinette. She led the way down a curving path
toward the south end of the island. The path dipped into a flat place.
Rock walls were high on either side of us. It was a hollow where people
had built fires.
She paused uncertainly. "It's so overgrown," she said.
"What are you looking for?"
She moved to one side and looked at the sloping wall. She nodded to
herself, and went up, nimble as a cat, using the tough vines to pull
herself up. She stopped and spread the vines. She was above a ledge.
She turned and motioned to me. My leather soles gave me trouble. I
slipped and scrambled, but I made it to the ledge beside her. She
pushed tough weeds and vines aside. She sat down and put her feet in
the dark hole and wormed her way forward. When she was in up to her
hips she lay back and, using her hands on the upper edge of the small
slit in the rocks, pulled herself in the rest of the way.
I made hard work of it. It was narrow. She pulled at my ankles. Finally
I was inside. She leaned across me, her weight on me, and pulled the
weeds and vines back to cover the hole. At first I could not see, and
then my eyes became used to the light. Daylight came weakly through
the hole. The hole itself, the slit in the rocks, was not over thirty
inches long and fourteen inches high at its widest point. Inside it
widened out to about five feet, and the ceiling was about three feet
high. It was perhaps seven feet deep.
She said, in a low voice, "Timmy found it. He was climbing on the rocks
one day and he found it. It's always dry and clean in here. See, the
sand is dry, and feel how fine it is. It became our place. It became
my favorite place in the whole world. I used to come here alone, too.
When things got too--rugged. We used to keep things here. A box with
candles and cigarettes and things. Nobody in the world could ever find
us here. We kept blankets here and pillows. We called it our house. Kid
stuff, I guess. But it was nice. I never thought I'd come back here."
"Then this is the place he meant."
"Let's look."
It was easy to dig in the sand. She found the first one. She gave a
little gasp of pleasure when she found it. She dug it out of the soft
sand. We held it close to the weak daylight and opened it. The wire
clamp slid off easily. The rubber ring was stuck to the glass. I pulled
the top off. The bills were tightly packed. I pulled some of them out,
two tens and a twenty.
We both dug in the place where she had found it. We found three more
jars. That was all. We lined them up against the wall. I could see
the money through the glass. I looked at the money. I remembered how
I had thought it would be. I had thought it would be an answer. But I
had found the answer before I found the money. Now it meant only that
perhaps it could still be traded for a life.
"Now he's coming this way," she whispered.
I heard him when he called again. "Howard! Tal Howard!" We lay prone,
propped up on our elbows, our heads near the small entrance, her cheek
inches from mine.
"Tal Howard!" he called, alarmingly close. He was passing just below
us, his head about six or seven feet below the ledge.
He called again at a greater distance, and then all we could hear was
the sound of the river.
"What will we do?" she whispered.
"All we can do is outwait him. We can't deal with him. He won't make
any deals. He's way beyond that. We'll have to wait until night. I
don't think he'll leave. We'll have to try to get to the water at
night. Can you swim?"
"Of course."
"We can make it to shore then, with the money."
There was no point in telling her the deal I had planned. There was no
chance of making the deal. I was certain that if he found us, he'd kill
both of us. When he had talked to me, I had sensed the pleasure he took
in killing. The way he had talked of George, and the way he had talked
about holding the knife at Ruth's throat. That can happen to a man.
There are men who hunt who do not take their greatest pleasure in the
skill of the hunt, but rather in the moment of seeing the deer stumble
and fall, or the ragged bird come rocketing down. From animal to man is
a difference in degree, not in kind. The lust to kill is in some men.
It has sexual overtones. I had sensed that in Fitzmartin. I could even
sense it in the tone of his voice as he had called to me when he had
passed the cave. A warm, almost jocular tone. He knew we were on the
island. He knew he would find us. He felt warm toward us because we
would give him pleasure. _Come out and be killed, Tal Howard._ A warm
and confident voice. It was not so much as though he had stepped beyond
sanity, but as though he had stepped outside the race, had become
another creature. It was the same way we all might one day be hunted
down by the alien creatures of some far planet. When the day comes, how
do we bargain for life? What can the rabbit say to the barrel of a gun?
I lay on my side. She lay facing me. I saw the sheen of her eyes and
the whiteness of her teeth in the half light of the cave. I could sense
the soft tempo of her breathing.
"So we wait," she said.
"And we'll have to be very careful. He likes the night."
"We'll be careful. It's worth being careful. You know, Tal, I thought
all along this would get messed up. Now I don't think so any more.
Isn't that strange? Now that it is as bad as it can get, I think we're
going to make it."
"I hope so."
She rolled onto her back. Her voice was soft. "We're going to make it.
We'll get to the car. There's enough money here. It isn't worth the
risk of going back after my things. We'll drive through the night, Tal.
We'll drive all night. We'll take turns. I'm a good driver. I know
just how it's going to be. We'll go to New Orleans. We can be there
late tomorrow. I know a man there. He'll help us. We'll sell the car
there. We'll catch our plane there. We'll have everything new. All
new clothes. Mexico City first, I think. Then over to Havana. I was
in Havana once. With--a friend. No, not Havana. Where will we go from
there, Tal?"
"Rio, Buenos Aires. Then Paris."
"Paris, of course. It's funny. I've always been looking. Like that
game where you come into the room and they've named something but you
don't know what it is and you have to find out. I've been looking for
something I don't know the name of. Ever feel like that?"
"Yes."
"You don't know what it is, but you want it. You look in a lot of
places for it. You try a lot of things, but they aren't it. This time I
know I'm going to find it."
We were quiet for a long time. She turned toward me again. I put
my hand on the curve of her waist, let it rest there, and felt the
quickening tempo of her breathing.
I do not try to excuse it. Until then she had had no special appeal
to me. I can try to explain it. It is an urgency that comes at times
of danger. It is something deep in the blood, that urgency. It is a
message from the blood. You may die. Live this once more, this last
time. Or it may be more complicated. There may be defiance in it. Your
answer to the blackness that wants to swallow you. To leave this one
thing behind you. To perform this act which may leave a life behind
you, the only possible guarantee of immortality in any form.
When catastrophe strikes cities, people learn of this basal urge. Men
and women in war know it. It is present in great intensity in many
kinds of sickness. Men and women are triggered by danger, and they lie
together in a hungry quickness in the cellars of bombed houses, behind
the brush of mountain trails, in lifeboats, on forgotten beaches, on
the grounds of sanitariums.
By the time it happened I knew that I was hopelessly in love with Ruth
Stamm. And I knew this woman in the cave with me was hard as stone. But
she was there. I took from her the stubborn slacks and the bulky sweat
shirt and the satin white bra. Her flesh gleamed dusky in the cave
light. We did not speak. It was very complete for us.
It was enough that she was woman. But with her first words she turned
back into Antoinette Rasi, and destroyed any possible emotional
overtones. "Well, aren't we the ones," she said, her voice a bit nasal.
She bumped her head on the roof as she was getting her shirt back on,
and commented on it with a very basic vocabulary. I turned so that I
did not have to look at her. I lay and looked out the entrance, through
the gaps between the vines and leaves. I could see the rock wall on the
other side of the hollow, thirty feet away. By lowering my head and
looking up, I could see a wedge of yellow sky above the rock.
As I watched I saw Fitzmartin's head and then his shoulders above
the rock wall. Behind me Antoinette started to say something in a
complaining voice. I reached back quickly and caught her arm and
grasped it warningly. She stopped talking immediately. She moved
forward and leaned her warm weight against the back of my left shoulder
so that she too could see. It was instinctive to want to pull back into
the cave, but I knew he could not see my face or hers behind the dense
screen.
He stood on the rock against the sky, feet spread, balancing easily. He
held a gun in his hand. His big hand masked the gun, but it looked like
a Luger. The strange sky made a dull glint on the barrel. When he moved
his head he moved it quickly, as an animal does. His mouth was slack,
lips parted. His khaki pants were soaked to the knees. He studied the
rock wall where the cave was, foot by foot. I flinched involuntarily
when his gaze moved across the cave mouth. He turned and moved out of
sight.
She put her lips close to my ear. "My God, I can see what you mean.
Dear Jesus, I'm glad I didn't wait to have a chat with _that_! He's a
damn monster. How come he was running around loose?"
"He looked all right before. It was on the inside. Now it's showing."
"Frankly, he scares the hell out of me. I tell you they ought to shoot
him on sight, like a crazy dog."
"He's getting worse."
"You can't get any worse than that. What was he looking over here for?"
"I think he's eliminating places where we could be, one by one. He's
got a lot of daylight. I hope he eliminated this place."
"You can't see much from over there. Just a sort of shadow. And the
hole looks too little, even if it didn't have the stuff in front of it."
"I hope you're right."
"He gives me the creeps."
I kept a careful watch. The next time I saw him, he was climbing down
the wall on the far side. Antoinette saw him, too. Her hand tightened
on my shoulder. Her breath was warm against my ear.
"What's he doing down there?" she whispered.
"I think he's trying to track us. I don't know how good he is at it. If
he's good, he'll find that our tracks end somewhere in the hollow."
"The ground was soft," she whispered. "Dear God, I hope he doesn't know
how."
He was out of sight. We heard one rock clatter against another, audible
above the soft roar of the river. We moved as far back in the little
cave as we could get. Nothing happened for a long time. We gradually
relaxed again, moved up to where we could watch.
It must have been a full half hour later when I saw him on the far
side, clambering up. He sat on the rim at the top. He aimed carefully,
somewhere off to our right, and pulled the trigger. The sound was flat,
torn away by the wind. He aimed and fired again, this time closer.
I realized too late what he was doing. I tried to scramble back. He
fired again. Antoinette gave a great raw scream of agony. Blood burst
from her face. The slug had furrowed down her face, smashed her teeth
and her jaw, striking at an angle just under her cheekbone. She
screamed again, the ruined mouth hanging open. I saw the next shot take
her just above the left collarbone, angling down through her body.
She dug her fingers down into the sand, arched her body, then settled
into death as the next bullet slapped damply into her flesh. I was
pressed hard against the rocks at the side. He shot twice more into her
body and then there was silence. I tried to compress myself into the
smallest possible target.
When he fired again, it was from a different angle. The slug hammered
off rock, ricocheting inside the small cave, hitting two walls so
quickly the sound was almost simultaneous before it buried itself in
the sand. The next one ricocheted and from the sharp pain in my face I
thought it had hit me. But it had filled my right cheek with sharp rock
fragments. I could move no farther to the side. If he found the proper
angle he would hit me directly. If he did not, a ricochet could kill
me. I grasped her body and pulled it over me. He fired several more
shots. One broke one of the jars. Another hit her body. My hands were
sticky with her blood. I shielded my head against her heavy breast, my
legs pulled up. I tried to adjust the body so it would give me maximum
cover. A ricocheting slug rapped the heel of my shoe with such force
that it numbed my foot.
I gave a harsh, loud cry of pain. The shooting stopped. After a few
minutes he spoke in an almost conversational tone. He was close under
the cave.
"Howard! Howard! Come on out of there."
I did not answer. He had thought of caves, had fired into the shadowy
places, had hit the right one. I hoped he would believe us both dead.
It was my only chance, that he should believe us both dead. I wormed
my way out from under her body. There was no loose stone in the cave.
There were only the jars of money.
I took one jar and crouched off to the left of the entrance. I heard
the rattle of the rocks and knew he was climbing. I saw the vines
tremble. I was poised and ready to hurl the jar at his face. But his
face did not appear. His strong hand appeared, moving slowly into the
cave, inviting me to try to grasp it. It was a clever move. I knew
that he was probably braced there, gun in the other hand, waiting
for such a try. More of his arm came into the cave. I could see his
shoulder, blocking off the light. But I could not see his head.
His brown hand crept across the sand. It touched Antoinette's dark
hair, paused for a moment, felt its way to her face, touched lightly
her dead eyes. She lay curled where I had pushed the body in crawling
out from under it. The hand moved across the sand again. It came to
her flexed knee, touched the knee, felt the material of the jeans. In
that moment I realized that he thought it was my knee. He had only seen
her from the waist up when he had approached the island in the boat.
She was curled in such a way he did not relate the knee to the face he
had touched. His powerful fingers bit through the blue jean material,
caught the flesh underneath and twisted it cruelly.
I heard his soft grunt of satisfaction. I readied myself. He put both
arms in, and wormed his way in head first. I knew he would not be
able to see immediately. The gun was in his hand. As soon as his head
appeared in the opening, inside the vines, I smashed the glass jar full
into his face.
The jar smashed, cutting my hand. I tried to snatch at the gun, but I
was too slow. He was gone. I heard the thud as he fell. I knew that I
could not afford to give him time to recover. I scraped myself badly
as I slid through the entrance. I grasped the vines and stood up,
teetering on the ledge. I saw him below me. He was on his hands and
knees, gun still in his hand, shaking his head in a slow, heavy way. It
was a twelve foot drop, perhaps a little more. I dropped onto him. I
landed on the small of his back, heels together, legs stiff.
My weight smashed him to the ground. The fall jolted me. I rolled to my
feet with agonizing slowness and turned to face the expected shot. He
lay quite still. His finger tips touched the gun. I picked it up and
moved back away from him and watched him. By watching closely I could
see the movement of his back as he breathed. I aimed at his head. But I
could not make myself fire. Then I saw that the breathing had stopped.
I wondered if it was a trick. I picked up a stone and threw it at him.
It hit his back and bounded away.
Finally I approached him and rolled him over. And I knew that he was
dead. He died in a curious way. He had fallen back off the narrow
ledge, fallen with the broken pieces of the heavy glass jar. Stunned,
he had gotten to his hands and knees. He was trying to clear his head.
When I had smashed him back to the ground, a large piece of the broken
jar had been under his throat. As I had watched him his blood had
soaked into the sandy soil. His blood had soaked a thick wad of the
money that had been in the jar. A wind blew through the hollow. There
were some loose bills. The wind swirled them around. One blew toward
me. I picked it up and looked at it stupidly. It was a ten-dollar bill.
I went up to the cave again. I think I had the idea of carrying her
down. I knew I could not make it. I looked at her. Paris was out. It
was done. I looked at her and wondered if this, after all, had been
what she was looking for. It could have been. It could have been the
nameless thing she sought. But I guessed that had she been given her
choice, she would have wanted it in a different form. Not so ugly. Not
with ruined face and cheap clothes.
I climbed back down. I was exhausted. A few feet from the bottom I
slipped and fell again. I gathered up all the money. I put it in the
cave with her. They could come and find it there when I told them where
it was. I went back to where we had left the boat. The river seemed a
little quieter. I took the line and walked the boat down to the south
end of the island. The current tugged at it. Below the island the river
was quieter. I got into the boat. Just as I started to row toward the
shore, it began to rain again, rain that fell out of a yellow sky. The
rain whispered on the gray river. It diluted the blood on my hands. The
rain was on my face like tears.
The banks were high. I found a place to beach the boat about a thousand
yards below the Rasi place. I walked through wet grass to the road. I
walked to the Rasi place.
Anita came out. I asked if she had a phone I could use.
"We've got no phone. Where's the boat? What did you do with the boat?
Where's Antoinette? What's all the blood on your clothes? What's
happened?"
She was still screaming questions at me when I fitted the key into the
ignition, started the car, and drove away.
Heavy clouds had darkened the afternoon. I had never seen it rain as
hard. Traffic crept through the charcoal streets of Hillston, their
lights yellow and feeble in the rain.
I turned through the arch and parked beside the police cars in the
courtyard of the station. A man yelled at me from a doorway, telling
me I couldn't park there. I paid no attention to him. I found Prine.
Captain Marion wasn't in. He'd gone home to sleep.
Prine stared at me in a funny way. He took my arm when he led me to a
chair. "Are you drunk?"
"No. I'm not drunk."
"What's the matter with you?"
"I know where to look for the girl, for Ruth. North of town. Near the
river. If she's alive. If she's dead I don't know where to look. She
wouldn't be far from where he got the boat."
"What boat?"
"Will you have people look for her? Right now?"
"What boat, damn it?"
"I'll tell you the whole thing after you look. I want to come, too. I
want to come with you."
They sent cars out. They called Captain Marion and the Chief of Police.
They sent people out to look in the rain. Scores of people searched. I
rode with Prine. In the end it was a contingent of Boy Scouts who found
her. They found the black coupé. The trunk compartment was open a half
inch. We sped through the rain when word came over the radio. But the
ambulance got there first. They were loading her onto the ambulance
when we arrived. They closed the doors and drove away before I could
get to the ambulance.
The car was parked behind a roadside sign. It had been covered with
roofing paper. Some of the paper had shifted in the wind. One of the
Scouts had seen the gleam of metal.
Two policemen in black rain-wet rubber capes were there.
"What shape was she in?" Prine demanded.
One of the men spat. "I don't think she'll make it. I think she was
about gone. She looked about gone to me. You know, the way they all
look. Just about breathing. Color of putty. Pretty banged up."
Prine whirled toward me. "All right. We've got her now. How about
Fitzmartin? Start talking."
"He's dead."
"How do you know he's dead?"
"I killed him. I'll tell you the rest later. I want to go to the
hospital."