To Make Death Love Us (16 page)

There was no window
to roll down in the van though some bit of relief came from the cab through the broken
communication pane. The Colonel felt a bit of it cool the skin of his face. He lifted his hands
to catch the breeze upon his forearms. He quickly occupied himself in remov­ing his shirt. He
stooped to the tangle of ropes that bound Serena to the floor. His hands were trembling. The
sight of this weakness set him to trembling all over. He dis­guised his panic in
action.

There was blood on
one of Serena's white stockings.

"You're hurt, my
little lady love," he murmured.

"I scarcely feel
it. My legs are nearly numb." In truth, she was in great pain, but not from her injuries. It was
Marco's pain that troubled her most. It was like a fire that burned in her own body, so greatly
did she sense it, did
she share it with
the gentle giant in the front compart­ment.

Her own shoulder
throbbed as if it too felt the bone-shattering impact of the bullet. It burned, it ached. It
raged against her outraged nerve endings as if someone had placed a red-hot coal against her
delicate white body.

Colonel John bent
over her solicitiously. "I'll have your dear little legs out from under the ropes and tent
rigging quick as a wink. Not to worry. Just be patient, my little darling."

"I will, Colonel
John. I will." She trusted him implicitly.

He grasped hold of
a coil of rope. His child-hands wouldn't quite circle it. When he heaved on the little he could
manage to grasp, the ropes and tent poles massed in a resisting clump, intertwining like the
rings of a magi­cian's trick. If he went on, he'd only create a greater tangle of it
all.

He took off his
belt and passed it round a coil of the rope, fitting the tongue through the buckle and drawing it
tight. He sought purchase for his feet on the floor and put his weight to the belt as though
playing at tug-of-war. The leather heels of his fashionable boots slipped on the sweat­ing steel
and he fell painfully upon his hip. He turned the other way about, and passing the belt over his
shoulder, he hauled forward like a tiny pony in its traces. He made some small progress and then
Serena suddenly cried out in great pain.

The tangled ropes
came free all at once and the Colonel stumbled forward in a rush, tent poles and riggings
tum­bling after him like an odd-looking tumbleweed.

Colonel John was up
on his feet in an instant and back at Serena's side as quick as he could move. He was at once on
his knees beside her. "What is it? How have I hurt you?"

Her small teeth had
caught her lip between them. As she sighed with the passing of the sharpness of that first
outcry, it was released. A tiny droplet of ruby
blood welled and glistened there until her tongue brushed it away.

"Oh. Oh. Oh," she
said. Her lovely hands made patterns in the air above her stockinged legs, wanting to touch
herself but afraid to do so.

The Colonel looked
at her poor, atrophied limbs again. Cleared of most of the obscuring rope, he could see far more
blood than was, at first, evident.

"My brave little
one," he nearly cried. He felt her large, shapely hand fall feather-soft upon his head. It was
like being touched by an angel. Their voices were so soft as to be the murmurings of lovers. "I'm
afraid to move it any­more."

She gasped. "Is it
broken?"

"I'm not a doctor.
What do I know of such things?"

He was worried,
frightened. He felt his confidence slip­ping, his command of the situation eluding him. Serena
sense it in him and would not allow him that.

She said, with the
utmost calm and assurance in her voice, "Dear John, you are very wise. Your eyes are sharp. I
think you know."

Colonel John
regained himself, becoming almost fa­therly in his ministrations.

"My love, it's not
so bad. Not so very bad at all. If you could only see, you'd know I was telling the truth." John
hoped with all his heart that what he said was true, for he was only guessing.

"I will see it,"
she said.

Her hand, the
sensitive fingers scarcely seeming to touch, appraised the damage to that most useless part of
her body—she did not conceive of her blindness as her greatest handicap—and Serena even managed a
smile.

"You are quite
masterful, my dear Colonel. And right, in that it is not so very bad. But it is very painful. I
don't think
I could bear to have it
jostled about any more." The pain was not all that unbearable but it distracted her. Too much of
it would rob her of her power and she felt she must save as much of herself for the task before
her. The long nightmare of the night was only beginning.

"What are you
whispering about?" Will's voice sud­denly demanded, fear large in his manner. "Are you figur­ing
out ways to save yourselves and to leave me here to die?"

"Serena's leg has
been injured, almost broken, Will," the Colonel said in a natural voice. He seemed calmer. In a
way the raw, naked fear in Will's voice seemed to steady him. At least he had better control of
himself than Will had.

"Don't whisper
about it, if that's what it really is," com­plained Will. "I want to know what the hell you're up
to back there?"

"Mind your
business, Will," said Colonel John.

"Mind my business?
Mind my business? Everything you do is my damn business. You work for me, remember? You belong to
me?"

The Colonel cut him
off with a laugh. "No more." It struck him suddenly as being funny. He almost giggled. "We don't
work for you now, Will, and we never did belong to you."

As he said it,
Colonel John understood it to be true. It had always been true but until that moment, until he
had just spoken it for himself and for all of them, he had not really known it. The knowledge of
it made him feel even more powerful.

It affected the
others, too. Paulette started to giggle and Pepino began to roar with laughter. Serena, even in
pain, laughed a little, too.

"Are you crazy?
What the hell are you all laughing about?" Will screamed at them. "Are you all going crazy back
there?"

The Colonel had a
big grin on his face when he sang out, "We'd all appreciate it, Will, if you would kindly shut
your big, fat mouth."

"Who the hell do
you think you're talking to?" raged Will Carney. He twisted violently in his seat, like an
ani­mal finding itself suddenly cornered.

Marco regarded Will
Carney curiously. In the dimness of the cab's interior he noted Will's wild eyes like those of
crazed, unbroken horses. He saw flecks of spittle in the corners of Will's mouth. He could not
hear the words shouted in the dark but he understood the sense of them, the torment and the
anxiety. He felt it himself.

Only the Strong
Man's splendid physique and marvel-ously rugged constitution kept him conscious. The pain was
almost too much to bear, yet he was awake, conscious of all that transpired around him. Will
worried him as much as anything. He feared Will would do something stupid.

"I own this
carnival. I own this truck. I own you. All of you. Where the hell would you all be without me?"
cried Will.

The Colonel's voice
came liltingly into the cab. "One place we wouldn't be, Will. We wouldn't be clinging to the side
of this rain-swept mountain, in a night as black as a black bear's lap. We wouldn't be where we
are, that's for sure, just a few seconds away from death."

"Blame it on me,
you bastard. Now you listen to what I have to tell you," Will raged. He was trying to turn around
in his seat. The truck began to wobble as his movements disturbed the delicate
equilibrium.

Marco saw that Will
was completely losing control. His uninjured arm came up and his heavy hand shot across
the space between them and slapped Will across
the mouth.

Will was stunned by
the force of the blow. He gasped like a drowning man, and slid back into place behind the wheel.
He held his face with his hands and started to cry softly.

Everyone was quiet
of a sudden, listening with deep embarrassment to his cowardly sobbing. They were at once
humiliated and fearful, for they had, indeed, once made Will Carney master of their lives. Now,
that master was too weak and useless to help them in their time of need.

Now, they had only
themselves and a dream. Only a dream between them and death.

Paulette, Serena,
and Pepino turned their eyes upon the Colonel. He met their stare unflinchingly. He sensed their
meaning, felt their unspoken trust.

He spoke with more
authority than he felt. "First, I'll bind up your leg, sweet Serena, as gently as I
can."

He tore his shirt
into ribbons and used them as ban­dages. His small hands were as delicate as a bird's touch as he
wound the cloth about the girl's injured leg. Her un­seeing, luminous eyes seemed to be staring
lovingly into his very heart as she withstood the agony his ministrations caused her. When he was
done, she sighed. She touched his shoulder.

"Truly you are a
giant," she said as her gift of thanks. "You have a most perfect body, like a miniature
David
by Michelangelo."

He knew it wasn't
so, but he thanked her with sweet shyness.

"I may have to hurt
you still more," he said.

She simply
nodded.

"Most of the
riggings and rope bundles are off you now.
I'm going to lift off the rest. Can you slide yourself out from underneath when I ask you
to?"

"I will
try."

It was the strength
in her saying that, that gave Colonel John his strength back. He seized hold of the ropes and
with muscles straining, heaved the weight off her. Serena placed her hands upon the floor and at
his gasped "now," dragged herself free along a river of pain.

The Colonel emitted
a strangled cry of success and let fall his burden. They rested.

"There's so much
more to be done," the Colonel said after a while.

"Just tell us what
to do. We're with you, Colonel John." Pepino said it for them all.

Serena was moved,
with the Colonel's care and her own strong arms, to a place beside the separation of van and cab.
The Colonel instructed her to place her hands upon the metal wall.

"Now's the time and
place for you to make use of your beautiful hands, Serena. You must read the shifting of the
truck as you read the words on a page."

"I will, John.
Trust me on that." She smiled to show that she was not afraid. In truth, terror was lurking just
behind her smile. She feared that the pain in her legs had ren­dered her powerless, had removed
her as a force to move them all. But she smiled bravely enough for their sakes.

Colonel John,
cautiously and with infinite stealth, moved a pair of cartons and piled them one atop the other
beneath the communicating window. He climbed them and put head and shoulders through the window
into the cab. There were tears in his eyes as he surveyed, for the first time, the bloody ruin
that had been visited upon Marco. Oh Christ! He recoiled, almost plunging back through the
window, but somehow, from some place in a
dream inside himself, he found the courage to grin at Marco, who smiled softly in
return.

"I'm afraid you're
done for, Marco," whispered Colonel John, mouthing the words so Marco could read them. The others
could not hear the midget. "It looks to be a griev­ous wound."

Marco nodded. He
shrugged. He understood there was nothing to be done about it. Only Serena knew him to be
wrong.

Colonel John looked
then to Will Carney whose body was still racked by sobs from time to time.

"I'm coming
through. I will climb out the window and then onto the roof," said Colonel John, his eyes bright
with tears for Marco, for them all.

Despite his grief,
there was steel in his voice, a determi­nation that spoke for all of them. He said it as
Alexander must have spoken when he announced his determination to conquer Darius.

Paulette watched
his tiny feet leave their place upon the boxes as the Colonel heaved himself up.

Upon the mountain,
the shelf of shale slipped a full yard. The mountain seemed to cry out. The shock wave ran
through its bones. Some metal part in the body of the van sang out, vibrating like an insect.
There was the mer­est trembling in the body of the truck. It was transferred to the interior
panel, which Serena touched.

"Stop!"
she said, in a voice
that froze Colonel John in place.

The Colonel hung in
space, looking like a child seeking cookies from the high pantry shelf.

"The truck is
trembling," said Serena.

She kept her magic
hands in place during the seemingly interminable time it took for the midget to make his way back
down on the boxes. He hesitated there, then stepped back cautiously to the floor. Serena's hands
read the tremors and vibrations. She knew it was the mountain itself that had shuddered. It was
that force that had moved the truck, not that the Colonel had overbalanced it. It was a difficult
thing to sense in the dark and she strained for the right answer, the right choice.