Seaview (36 page)

He could see above her and the cart six dark gliders coming over the hill's crest. He lifted her up quickly and put her in the seat, then ran around and jumped into the driver's side, hitting the gas pedal as he entered. The cart lurched forward, bounced as it crossed the wing tip, dug grooves in the apron of the occupied green, got beyond it, and started into the rough and up the hill toward the stone tower. The hill steepened quickly, and halfway up the cart slowed and coughed and quit. Allen jerked the wheel to the left, bringing the cart sideways, and it began to tilt. He rolled toward Melinda, trying to use their combined weights to keep it from falling, but it continued slowly up. He grabbed her around
the waist, squeezing her in the crook of his left arm. As he rolled with her, he reached back with his hand and got a hold on the mouth of his golf bag. They left the cart and fell into the rough. The bag ripped loose and the cart turned over on its left side and bounced and slid downhill. Allen threw himself over Melinda, pressing her in the brush. He had his golf bag in his left fist, and they were hidden in thick growth.

He stayed down over her for a long time. He kept his face pressed in the side of her neck; his cheek was pricked by pine needles, and the shallow tear in his forearm hurt him a little. Once he looked up, wondering about the six gliders, and saw them give it up. He caught them when they were very high, near the level with what he guessed was the hill's crest. There was a strong breeze there, forcing the gliders back. They turned, dipped, and angled for position, but none was able to negotiate the crest. One by one, they peeled off, bending away from the Air Station and toward the sea.

As his eyes came down from the sky, they rested on the stone tower. It was a good seventy-five yards up the hill from where they were. Still, it seemed the thing to do, and he brought his face back down to Melinda's and told her what he thought. She nodded sharply in agreement. He pulled his golf bag up beside him and slowly rose to a crouch. He checked the sky again and found it empty. He checked the hills across the fairway, looking down it and up to the hill over which the first glider had come. Then he looked to the green where the downed glider lay. It was still. He could not see the place where the flyer with the weapon had been struck by the Ram, but he could hear nothing from that direction. He looked back behind the green into the brush in the direction of the sea. The boy was there, hung in the pines, almost graceful, silent and still. And then he saw the body slowly falling in, the pines closing over it, and Chip was gone from sight.

From the direction of the lighthouse and the distant side of the golf course, where they could not see, they could hear only the muffled sounds of motors, some voices raised in command,
and the creak of machinery. Allen reached in his bag and fingered through the club heads until he felt his three-iron and pulled it free. He got up, slinging the bag over his shoulder as he rose. He had the iron in his left hand, and he reached down with his right, took Melinda's arm, and helped her to her feet. She staggered a little, but he held her while she steadied.

“You get in front,” he said. He got her there, and put his hand in the middle of her back, his arm out stiff. He used his three-iron as an awkward staff, and he pushed what strength he could into her, leaning forward, so that she could make it uphill. They went in tight little zigs and zags in order to cut down the steepness of the incline. They kept their heads down in their effort. Allen glanced up occasionally in order to steer them. With less effort and time spent than he had anticipated, they came to the wet, stone base of the small tower.

 

 

RICHARD'S INTENTION WAS TO KILL HIM ON THE EIGHTH green. He had seen that the eighth was set no more than a hundred feet from the public road that ran parallel to the high, jagged cliff, the golf course between it and the sea. The eighth was also set down in a shallow valley protected from wind, and the rough that ran from behind the green and continued all the way to the road was almost a forest. The pines in it were high and straight and very dense, and they started very close to the green's back, just beyond the sand trap behind it. He had seen him and his wife and the other three at the first tee through his binoculars, from where he stood against the car at the lighthouse parking lot, and he figured he had close to two hours, safely an hour and a half. He would get Gerry and something to eat, then he would come back and wait for them. The road to the lighthouse was crowded with walkers heading for the beach, and it had taken him a while to get past the clubhouse and away from the course.

When he got back to their motel room, Gerry had their things packed and ready in the way he had told her to. He told her to get in the car, and he took her to a drive-in on the highway
where they got some food. On the way he told her that she was to keep quiet and stay in the car and that, if she was good, he would find a good way later of giving her something she would like. When he got to the road that headed to the golf course, an hour and a quarter had passed, and as he came to the turn toward the lighthouse, he could see something was going on and that his plans might have to change.

He passed a policeman standing beside a motorcycle near the place where he had intended to enter the pines on foot. Up ahead, he saw a cruiser blocking the mouth of the lighthouse road. Some people were standing around on the road, but the land sloped up from there, and little could be seen in the direction of the course and the sea. He slowed but did not stop, passing the lighthouse cutoff.

“What's happening, Richard?” she said in the seat by the door.

“Just shut up and sit there,” he said.

He continued along, west of the course, until he passed the entrance of a campground and came to the road that moved off left, at an angle, to the Air Force Station, and then he stopped the car. He could see that the Air Force road ran along the downcoast edge of the golf course. Above the ascending road, up and to the right of it, he could see the three white domes. To the left, and also well up and toward the sea, he saw the parapet of the stone tower. There was a sign, marked government property, authorized vehicles only, at the mouth of the road, and a short way up it, at a turn, he could see the nose of a green military truck sticking out. Two men in uniform, with rifles in their hands, stood in front of the truck. He turned the car around and went back to the campground. When he got there, he parked in front of a small building near the road. The building was white cinder block, and it had a sign above the door, marked office. He went in. Gerry stayed in the car. In a few minutes he came out with a paper in his hand and a canvas packet under his arm. He got into the car and checked the simple numbered map on the paper. Then he drove around the building and entered the open meadow behind it.

There were a number of campers and tents, and as he entered the central dirt carpath that ran down the middle between them, he saw short sticks with numbers on them and the spokes of driving paths moving off to both sides. He turned at the second spoke, driving very slowly; when he came to number forty-three he stopped the car and got out.

The meadow was about three hundred yards deep, from the road to the hill that started up toward the golf course. He could see there were a good number of men in military dress lining the perimeter between the meadow and the course. Some of them had weapons slung over their shoulders, and some had sidearms. A number of the campers were milling around along the line, talking and looking up the hill behind it. There was smoke rising in the air in places from beyond the hill. The rain and the uniform and heavy cloud cover had begun to move off. It was still cloudy, but there was some hazy sun in places brightening the day a bit. He turned and looked over to the right and behind him. There was a low white building, the back of which came up close to the pines that covered the hill running between the campground and the Air Force Station road. The sign on the front of the building read:
showers/men
.

He told Gerry to get out of the car and help him. The tent was small, a one-man pup, and they got it up quickly. They took what they could find out of the trunk of the car, making the camp appear serious. Then he told her to get back in the car and wait. He told her she could get in the tent when she wanted to, but that the car and the tent were her only two places. He smiled at her, tightlipped, giving her the rules. The tent was very small and uninviting. He got his blue robe out of his suitcase and his shaving kit. Then he got in the tent, took off his shoes and socks and rolled them in the towel he had with him. He rolled his pants to the knee. When he was ready, he got out of the tent and headed over to the white building in his robe. When he got in, he checked the stalls to see no one inside of them. The place was empty, and he figured they were all outside, checking the military action. He went to
the screened window at the back of the building, raised it, and with the heels of both hands knocked the screen out. He put his shoes and socks on and made a bundle of his robe and towel and shaving kit. Then he got through the window, dropped to the ground, and stepped into the pines.

He headed up through the trees in the direction of the sea, passing to the right of the line of Air Force men. It took him a good ten minutes to reach the crest of the ridge. When he got there he looked down and saw the second fairway. He could see the green and the dark object on it, though he could not identify it. He saw the golf cart turned on its side to the right of the green in the low rough. Above him, up the ridge in the pines to his right, he could see the top of the stone tower. He took his binoculars out of his shaving kit and trained them on it. He saw Allen, his head and shoulders visible, at the parapet, standing still and looking out. Allen seemed to be alone, his wife nowhere in evidence. He dropped his kit and towel and robe in the brush. He checked his pistol and shoved it down in his belt. Then he headed up and along the ridge. He was starting to buzz a little, and he would have liked to hurry. But the pines were thick, forcing a slow pace. He figured it would take him a good twenty minutes to get there.

 

 

THEY STRUGGLED TOGETHER UP THE ENCLOSED SPIRAL. He stayed to the outside of her and pressed his hand on the cold stone for support, his bag scraping against the curve as they ascended. She wasn't limp, but she was staggering, and it was little more than his body on one side and the inner wall on the other that she felt was keeping her up. She knew it certainly wasn't her breath, because she couldn't get much of it, and she was trying to mask her wheezing, keep it from bothering him, and that too took its effort. It took them a long time, but the tower was under forty feet high, and when they finished climbing, she had something left.

They came out into the cool of the late afternoon air, and she found that if she leaned back against the tower's upper core she
could stand. He let her do it, slipping the bag from his shoulder, leaning it against the notched parapet. It was still heavily overcast, but it had stopped raining, and even as he watched the cloud cover again, the sky began to clear, and some sun came through, and there were soft shadows on the stone. He looked at her, and they both managed parts of smiles. He stood at the parapet that came to the level of his lower chest and looked away from her and out. He had expected the sight line to be better than it was. He could see the whole of the upper green on top of the hill over which the gliders had come, but he could not see much farther. Off to the right, and higher still, he could see the sixth tee and the tall brush at the sea's edge that came up to it. There were two hand carts in front of the tee and what looked like a couple of golf bags lying on it. Smoke was rising in places across the course, from sources beyond his vision. There were no longer any sounds of the kind they had heard earlier. He could just see the edge of the green below him and the far edge of the fairway running back from it. He could not see the cart or the gliders from where he was.

He turned back from the notched outer wall and walked to where she was leaning against the inner core and pressed against it beside her. Their shoulders touched, and he felt a little stab where he'd been hit when his forearm brushed her, but he did not move it away, and he put his hand down and took her hand.

“It's kind of like we're little people on top of a rook from a chess set,” he said, and she laughed halfheartedly in agreement. His other hand came up and touched her cheek and then came down again. They stood, leaning and looking over at the wall in front of them. The sun brightened the notches in some places. It was as if they were waiting for something. She had been waiting for her breath to come back, and it did. He had no idea what he might be waiting for. They continued to stand there, each gathering strength and as long as they had that task, their postures didn't seem awkward to them, but after a while his mind began to fidget, and he felt he had expectations. They were here now. They had done things. They could even smell the sea. They were so
close to it, they could walk over to it were the circumstances other than they were. What had happened down below had not thrown either of them. They had been so much in it that they had not had space to think about it, but now they had that space and time.

She felt her illness coming back to her, unsullied again, and she sensed she had the final closure back, contained in her body, and she had no need for talk, explanations, or plans. He had none of what she had, and he felt odd and restless and uncomfortable. He would have talked, and he did feel that talking would be very useful to him, and he tried hard to think of something to say, but he could not think of a single thing. Half-ideas formed in his head, but when he tried to move them into words they seemed to dissolve and go away. She knew that when he had touched her cheek fleetingly a moment before, that had been it, about all she would get, not near enough, but all.