For a few moments he rested, but he did not dare to rest too long, for fear that his consciousness would go again, and he would drift from his purpose like a rudderless boat on an empty sea. He had to concentrate on those steps and on the door at the top.
Inhaling deeply and sending up a silent prayer, Jess hoisted his weight up with the aid of his elbow and threw his head higher. His rear end landed on the bottom stair with a crack, while his head smashed against the front of a higher stair. He balanced there, afraid to breathe for fear of losing his new seat. Slowly he twisted his body, curving his frame against the unyielding wooden planks, balancing off the rickety railings of two-by-fours and forcing himself upward.
His tedious journey was unmarked by thoughts or doubts or worries. Every fiber of his being was concentrated on the simple progress from stair to stair. His feet and hands, so numb as to be useless, were weights he dragged with him. His body was pierced by splinters and ached in every part. A fog swirled dangerously close to his preciously guarded consciousness. Jess tried to count, to fight it off, but it was persistent and seductive. He lifted his head and stared at the needle-thin shafts of light which pierced the door. He was so close now that they fell on his sleeves. He forced himself to stay alert.
With a last, anguished push, he reached the top. He put his face to the precious light and sucked in the air. It was not as cool as he had hoped, not as clean. But it revived him, all the same.
For a few moments he laid his face there, tempted to forget about forcing the door. He would just breathe, and breathe, until someone came. But then the image of the shadow across the bar of light returned to his mind. Evy opening the door. No one would come. No rescue. He had to try.
Jess pulled himself up until his rear end rested on the top step. The upright position was dizzying, and he leaned his head against his prison door. After a few moments the vertigo subsided. He opened his eyes. He would have to hit the door with all his strength, and hope it gave. Up close, he examined the wood as best he could. As he suspected, it was old and rotted in spots. He looked up toward the area where the doorknob should be. He deduced that the door was latched from the outside. Worriedly, he contemplated the possibility of a bolt. Then he shook his head. He decided that a bolt was unlikely in an old house like this. He tried to remember the night he had come here to look at the “leak.” He searched his mind for the picture of Evy unlocking the door. As he did, another chilling thought occurred to him. What if she were home? What if he managed to break through the door and she were standing there on the other side, waiting for him? The thought made him shudder. He waited until the tremor passed. The house was quiet. She was probably gone. One way or the other, he had to strike.
He arranged himself on the stair so that when he propelled himself forward he would hit the door with maximum force. Dispassionately he anticipated the pain that would come; it would be as if it were affecting some other man. His one concern was to break through. Jess remembered a TV show he had seen once about karate masters who chopped through blocks of wood. It was said that they imagined their hands on the far side, even as they struck. Jess tried to concentrate.
He leaned his body back as far away from the door as he could get without falling from his precarious perch. He steeled himself for the pain.
One,
he counted to himself.
Two, three.
He hurled himself at the door.
A few mourners were already trickling out of the oak doors of the church when Evy and Maggie pulled up in the car.
Evy gave the misted windshield a flick of the wipers so that they could better observe the people as they filed out of the church. An elderly man and woman were being helped down the steps by Charley Cullum and another man whom Maggie did not know. “Jess’s parents?” she asked.
Evy nodded, staring at the procession which was beginning to disperse as people got into their cars. “I think so,” she said. “But we came here just around the time they moved, so I never really knew them.”
Maggie wondered fleetingly if Sharon would appear but let the thought go. What difference did it make now?
The church bell tolled its sorrowful dirge amidst the
sound of starting engines. Maggie could not take her eyes from the doors of the church, from where the grim-faced company emerged. The sight of them paralyzed her.
Grace Cullum, clinging tightly to the hands of her restless young sons, passed in front of the car. Jack Schmale walked, head down, not far behind her. Maggie looked away from the church portals and saw Ned and Sadie Wilson climbing into Ned’s truck across the street. Ned looked uncomfortable in his dark suit, his white socks peeking out under the wide cuffs.
“There’s the Wilsons,” Evy observed.
The hostess at the Four Winds passed by the car, leaning against a handsome, bearded young man in an army fatigue jacket. The girl’s crown of braids bobbed up and down with her sobs. Maggie watched, dry-eyed, as the young man helped the waitress aboard the back of his motorcycle.
“We’d better get going,” said Evy, turning the key in the ignition. “It’s a long drive to the cemetery. It’s out near your house.”
They drove in silence; the only sounds were the occasional rush of wind and the steady squeak of the windshield wipers. The gloomy procession of cars wound steadily along the island roads, their headlights beaming through the fog. Maggie stared out the water-streaked window at the acres of dark trees, virtually denuded of leaves, which were whipping by. Every branch and rock and fallen leaf reminded her of Jess. The only reason that she did not close her eyes was because she did not want to see his face.
“A lot of people turned out,” said Evy. “Especially for such a bad day.”
“Yes,” Maggie replied unenthusiastically.
“Everybody liked Jess,” said the girl.
Maggie only nodded. “Do you think the boats will be running today?” she asked.
Evy gave an exasperated sigh. “Of course. Why wouldn’t they?”
“It’s wet and foggy.”
“That’s nothing to them,” said the girl. “I’ll tell you what’s bad. These roads.” She squinted hard and leaned toward the windshield. “It’s hard to see anything.”
“Be careful,” said Maggie.
Evy shrugged. “It’s just over this rise.” Within a few moments she had brought the car to a halt just ahead of several others and they both sat, looking down at the valley of headstones, ghostly in the mist. Several of the mourners carried armfuls of flowers, incongruously bright, which they set around one of the headstones. Slowly the other mourners began to exit the warmth of their cars and plod down toward the flurry of somber activity in the stillness of the cemetery.
“Well, let’s go,” said Evy.
Maggie hung back. “I can’t.”
“Come on,” said the girl impatiently. “Here, you can use this.”
The girl held out a handkerchief toward her, trimmed in a delicate pattern of knotted cotton lace. Maggie hesitated, then reached for it. She held it near her nose, breathing in the dense, flowery scent. Then she rubbed her fingers together, noting the powdery substance.
“Talcum,” said Evy.
“It smells good,” said Maggie.
Evy was already out of the car and making her way down the hill. Maggie caught up with her.
“Did you bring an umbrella?” she asked.
“I can’t remember everything,” Evy snapped.
Maggie followed behind her, clutching the handkerchief tightly in her hand. She could distinguish the faces of the others as they neared the grave site. She imagined that she could hear a murmur snaking through the gathered mourners as they approached. Maggie forced herself to look only at the headstone, which read
Herlie, Michael, 1948–1967.
She wondered if Jess’s name would be added to the stone, even though his body was still in the sea.
Father Kincaid, the slight, gray-haired parish priest, stepped toward the headstone. His black cassock billowed in the wind. An altar boy in a white robe held an umbrella over the priest’s head. “My dear friends,” began the priest in a reedy voice. “We gather here, at the grave of Michael Herlie, to bid farewell now to his brother, Jesse. Two young men, loving brothers in life, who were struck down in their prime. Now united in death…”
The winds whipped his words up and away, like cinders. Maggie could hardly hear him. What did he know about Jess? she thought. Perhaps he had baptized him, ministered to him for years, even married him. And now he was eulogizing him. Everyone there had known Jess longer than she. But she had loved him. His every movement, every word. She had loved to watch him, to touch him, to hear his voice. She should have been content
with that. She might have learned to be content, loving him from afar.
This is not your fault,
she reminded herself.
But you could have let him be,
nagged another voice inside of her.
But he wouldn’t let me,
she thought. He would never have been satisfied with “no.” The memory of his urgency stabbed through her.
“Ashes to ashes…” intoned the priest.
No. Not Jess.
“Dust to dust…”
Good-bye. Oh, good-bye.
The finality of the ceremony battered down the wall of her defiant composure. Tears, which she had forced back repeatedly, began to come. They squeezed out, one by one, like drops of blood. Her body shook, only partly from the chill. She raised the handkerchief to her eyes and wiped away the tears with an angry swipe.
“And may the angels welcome him to his home in paradise.” The mourners stared sadly at the flower-bedecked gravestone.
Suddenly, an unearthly howl of pain pierced the graveyard. The priest stopped short in his blessing and stared at Maggie who was screaming now, her hands clapped to her eyes. The other mourners stared as Maggie emitted cries like that of a wounded animal. A loud murmur raced through the shocked throng.
“Stop that,” Evy pleaded, tugging at Maggie’s arm. Looking worriedly around at the other mourners, she began dragging Maggie away from the grave site.
Maggie stumbled blindly along, one hand clutching her eyes, the other grasping Evy’s jacket as the girl
pulled her up the hill. “Oh, my God!” Maggie shrieked.
“We’re almost to the car,” Evy said. “Hang on.” She guided the wailing woman to the car door and held on to her with one hand as she opened it. The eyes of all the mourners were riveted on the progress of the two women. Evy shoved Maggie gently down into the seat, then slammed the door shut behind her. She quickly ran around to the other side and slipped into the driver’s seat.
“My eyes,” Maggie moaned. “Oh, God, they’re on fire.” A thousand burning needles seemed to be stabbing her eyeballs. Her head felt swollen to the point where it could burst, and her temples throbbed. “Help me,” she screamed out in anguish.
Evy wrested the balled-up hanky from Maggie’s ringers and examined it. The hanky still smelled of the perfume she had sprayed on it last night. But the scouring powder was now in streaky tracks along the hanky’s surface. The rain had come in handy. It had dampened it just enough so that it didn’t matter how many tears Maggie cried. Evy rolled the hanky up again and stuffed it in her purse beside her on the seat.
I’d better remember not to use it,
she thought, and gave a silent, mirthless laugh.
“Oh, help me. My eyes,” Maggie moaned. “I have to go to the hospital.” She grabbed blindly at Evy’s arm.
“I’m helping you,” the girl insisted, shaking off her grasp.
“The doctor. You have to take me. Please,” Maggie cried. Evy could hear the weakness and confusion in Maggie’s voice even as she struggled.
“I will,” said Evy. The car was already moving.
23
The city room of the New York
Daily News
was about the size of a ballroom, filled with enough desks and chairs to make it look like a warehouse for office furniture. Owen Duggan threaded his way through the maze of desks, some of them occupied by men and women reading the paper, talking on the phone, or clacking away at typewriters. He moved down the aisles uncertainly at first, until he spotted the man he was looking for. Then he strode up to the reporter, who was hunched over his typewriter, and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Vance,” he said.
Vance Williamson raised his face from the page he was studying and gazed up at Owen through his tortoiseshell horn-rimmed glasses. He pushed a wheat-colored swatch of hair off his forehead and smiled wanly.
“Hi, Owen.” He greeted his old friend as if Owen had merely returned from a break at the water cooler, rather than surprised him with a rare visit from a remote island retreat.
Owen was not put off by the anemic greeting. He knew the crime reporter’s bland facade to be deceptive.
Once, over about the fourth Scotch in one of their regular drinking sprees in their UPI days, he had declared Vance Williamson to be, “Okay, despite your pedigree.” Williamson had indulged in a rare blush which rose from the neck of his button-down collar, tattersall-checked shirt.
“How’s business? The hoods still keeping you hopping?” Owen asked.
Vance tossed a pencil on his desk top and nodded. “Never a dull moment around here. You know that. What brings you to town?”
“A wild-goose chase,” Owen admitted.
Vance raised his blond eyebrows a millimeter above his horn-rims.
Owen rested his bulk against an empty desk. “I get a call at my house that
Life
wants to see me immediately. I’ve had this series on wild birds pending…”
“Wild birds,” Vance scoffed. “This from a man who took the only existing pictures of a mob rubout in progress in Bensonhurst.”
“You city boys are all alike,” said Owen. “Action. That’s all you think about. There are finer things, you know.”
Vance chuckled and shook his head. “You really like it up there,” he observed.
“I do,” said Owen. “You should come up sometime. You can bring your current honey, whoever that might be.”
“Barbara,” said Vance.
“Barbara? Still? You’re slowing down.”