Murder in the Wind (22 page)

Frank Stratter had clung to the tree and watched Torris drown. Billy went under with the money from Flagan’s wallet still in his pocket. That had been a tactical error. But there had been no time to transfer the money.

Stratter had had no idea that the water had gotten so deep, that the currents would be so strong. It was like being caught in an incoming tide. He saw the big man trying to save the girl, trying to tow her back to the house. Stratter felt uneasy. Some of his confidence had gone when the old man had jumped at him, grabbed at him, screeching. The look Flagan had given him, kneeling there in the gloom, had diminished his confidence further. And finally the astonishing strength and depth of the water had shaken him.

He looked back toward the house, the wind like a weight against his face and shoulders. All the world was gray, the roof corners of the house almost indistinguishable against the inky racing clouds. Spume stung his cheeks and the current tugged at his legs. He turned and looked the other way, saw trees fifty yards farther, let go and swam toward them with the current, saving his strength, keeping himself afloat, letting the current carry him on. The wind was so strong that it had an odd effect. Low as he was in the water it seemed to catch at him and thrust him along. He sensed that the wind had grown stronger since he had been in the water. There was a deep note in the heart of it, like the constant bowing of a string on a bass.

He reached the trees and held to them and rested for a few moments and then went on. Soon it would be dark. He wanted to reach the main road before full dark. He suspected that it would be higher, high enough so that he could get out of the water. It should not be over another half mile away. He could barely see another clump of trees ahead. Pines. They were slightly to the side and he swam toward them. When it looked as though he would be carried by them, he swam as strongly as he could and reached them. He held on to a tree on the east side of the cluster, a tree a foot in diameter. He shook the water out of his eyes and looked above him and saw two soaked miserable raccoons on a limb in silhouette against the lesser darkness of the sky.

He began to feel confident again. It was a good possibility that none of those back in the house would survive. Even should the one named Maiden rescue the girl and learn his name, he would not live to tell. When the water finally went down they would find the truck, the other bodies, and suppose that he too had drowned. It would come out all right. Everything had always come out all right. You used your head and took the breaks and things always worked out.

He hooked his right leg around the tree and turned and looked east, looking for the next group of trees, the next stopping place. It was getting dark. All this water and the darkness like the end of the world. It had been the end of the world for Billy Torris.

The sudden heavy pressure against his right ankle made him cry out in sudden fright. He grasped the tree with his arms and yanked hard, but he could not free himself. He could not understand what had happened. Then he saw the altered angle of one of the other trees. The rush of water had loosened the soil around the roots. The wind and the current had canted the tree over until it rested at an angle against the tree to which he clung. The two trunks met about four feet below the water level, imprisoning his leg between them, locking it just above the ankle.

He made himself take a series of slow deep breaths. He thought it out and saw a way he might free himself. He locked his arms around the trunk of the tree, raised his left leg and got his left foot planted firmly against the trunk of the tree that had tipped. Slowly he exerted his strength until he was blinded by the effort and he could hear a red roaring in his ears. His shoulders popped and creaked and the cords of his throat stood out. At his maximum effort he felt a tiny diminishing of the pressure on his leg. He tried to rip it free. It moved a few inches and then the larger tree moved and settled more firmly against his. He felt the ankle socket go, a slow inexorable crackling, as of a soft round stone caught in the slow turning of a vise.

He screamed with the pain and screamed again and the world blurred and he sagged into the water. The water revived him and he lifted his head again, coughing the water out of his throat. He made himself be calm again. It took longer. He took a deep breath and went under, twisting himself awkwardly against the current down to where he could feel the leg where it went between the two trunks. It felt sickeningly flat. He tore at the bark with his fingers. He felt how the leg was caught in a sort of inverted V, and had he pulled down instead of wrenched upward when he felt the first pressure, he might well have freed himself.

He thought of what could happen. The tree might shift again, releasing him. He sensed that he was bleeding. He might faint and drown. He tried to think of what he should do. He could take off the purple shirt and use the knife and cut a strip for a tourniquet, and fashion another longer strip into a sort of sling and tie himself to the trunk so that should he faint, his head would stay above water. But suppose his own tree should go while he was tied there? The thing to do was keep the knife handy, ready to cut himself free.

As he started to take off the shirt, he was annoyed by the wind-driven crests breaking into his face. He tried to hitch himself and realized that he could not. He stared at the trunk and up at the limbs and as he realized that the water was getting higher, panic came quickly. He fought hard, exhausting himself quickly, sobbing aloud as he fought. The trees were as unmovable as pillars of concrete. He rested for a time. The water was higher. He had to keep his chin tilted up in order to breathe.

With his head uptilted, he could see the thin shadows of the two raccoons. Animals would sometimes gnaw off a leg to escape a trap. He thought of his knife again. He took it out of his pocket and it slipped out of his trembling fingers and was gone. He looked woodenly upward. He sobbed again and hugged the rough trunk and tried to tear his leg free. The effort did not last long. From then on he struggled to breathe, straining up for each precious quarter inch of height, holding his breath when the chop broke over his face.

Several times he sucked in water and was able to expel it and find air. He held the trunk as high as he could reach. He thought that this could not be happening. It was not a true thing. Then he could find no more air. He expelled water and breathed in water and it filled his lungs. His lungs worked in spasms, sucking in and expelling the alien element, and he strained upward, and his eyes were wide open under the water. The lungs quieted and his hands slipped and the world faded quietly away from him. Caught there, his body trailed out in the current, three feet below the surface. When both trees went slowly down together, he was released and the current moved the body inland. The two raccoons swam sturdily toward other refuge, eyes alert in the bandit faces.

When the house shifted and turned and caught again, Flagan lifted his head and waited. He got to his feet. The house was steady again, but it was a precarious steadiness. He got to his feet and walked heavily into the hallway. It was tilted enough so that it was difficult to walk there. His right shoulder kept thudding against the wall. It was not that the slant was steep. He remembered a house at an amusement park long ago, and how Babe had giggled as she tried to go up the stairs. When a house was just a little off line, it affected your balance.

He had felt a curious lethargy since the death of Charlie Himbermark. It had made his own focus, his special interests, less intense. It had made him feel ridiculous and unimportant. It had made him feel as if it were important for him to explain something about himself to a disinterested bystander. Perhaps to Ruth. Explain himself carefully to that dark still face. It was incongruous to think of her. And he did not know what it was that he would tell her. Perhaps just say,
I am me. I am Johnny Flagan and I am older than I had thought.
Charlie’s death had seemed to uncover an area of gray weariness, the way a bandage might be taken from a wound that could not be healed. He wondered if he would walk on the streets again, waving, smiling, talking to friends. If so, it would not be quite the same.
Why should the death of Charlie have such an effect,
he wondered.
Charlie was a nothing. An incompetent, irritating old man. Or am I just more aware of my own death? Aware of its inevitability even should I survive this monstrous roaring thing. Aware of this sagging much-used flesh, of broken blood vessels, of matronly belly and breasts. I who was so strong. Work the nets all day and tom-cat all night and be out there again in the pale morning, watching for the leap and flash of the mullet.

He heard the scream then. The long unforgettable scream of anguish and loss. It came from the room where the Dorns were. As he went in he felt the wrench and roar as part of the roof was torn away, felt the thrust of the unimpeded wind on his back that pushed him into the room.

Both children were crying, their voices inaudible in the storm. The Dorn woman lay half across her husband. Flagan went over to her and looked at the man’s still face, at the trickle of blood which had run from his left ear, and understood. He felt an overwhelming tenderness for this woman he did not know. He gently pulled her away from her husband. He had to reach around the back of the man’s neck to pry her right hand loose. When he did so he inadvertently touched the top of the man’s head and felt the queasy shift of the loose bone at the crown of his head. He thought, wonderingly,
We’re not lasting well. Not well at all. We’re going one at a time here.
The woman strained back toward the body on the floor, then turned into Flagan’s arms, trembling violently. He held her and wondered that he now held a woman he did not know, yet held her without lust, without need. Held her because she was afraid. Because they were both afraid.

There was another screeching, ripping sound, a faint thumping overhead. With his mouth close to the woman’s ear he said, almost shouting, “The kids! You got to look after the kids!” He repeated it and for a long time he thought he hadn’t reached her. Then she pulled away, not looking at him, and went to her children. The house shifted a little, less than before. He went over and pulled one of the blankets from underneath the man and spread it over him. The wind flapped it and tried to pull it away, but Flagan knelt heavily and tucked the edges under the body, wondering as he did so what sort of man this had been, this lean dark man with the tired face. It made him feel like a man of God to be performing this small service. He wished he knew words he could say.

As he straightened up he became aware of a new sound, a repeated thudding that shook the house, a thud that seemed to come at three- or four-second intervals. With each thud the house trembled. He looked at the woman and saw that she had heard it too. She knelt there, an arm around each child, looking at him, her head cocked to one side.

Flagan left the room hurriedly.

Betty Hollis watched her husband for a few moments, then stepped forward and slapped him as hard as she could, as hard as she could swing her arm. It hurt her hand. The blindness did not go away. She swung again and again. She stopped and looked at him. He came out of it like a person coming out of sleep. He looked at her and the madness of panic was gone from his eyes. His mouth worked. He looked ashamed. Her fingers had left white stripes on his cheek, stripes that were quickly changing to dark red.

She looked at him and she wanted to cry. She knew that if they lived, they would stay together. But the best part of it was over. They would stay together because he would not give up the money, and she would not give him up. But the good part was gone. She remembered a kind of candy she had always liked. It was from France. It came in a metal box and each piece was individually wrapped. You could tell what each piece was by the shape of it inside the tin foil wrappings. Her favorite had been the coffin-shaped pieces usually wrapped in green foil. They had bitter-sweet chocolate on the outside, and the inside was of chopped cherries in a sweet heavy liqueur. Once she had purchased three boxes out of her allowance. They were expensive. A school friend had gone up to her room while she was out, had opened every box and eaten every one of the special pieces. Every one.

She remembered that she had eaten all the rest of the candy in the boxes, but she had eaten it with sadness and regret and muted anger.

Now, in this marriage, the very best part was gone. They would both know that. It would color all the rest of it. He would forever be aware of her knowledge that he was something less than a man. It would change him like slow poison, and it would change their lovemaking. She knew she could never forget this scene, this horrid, babbling, jittering breakdown, this hulk of tan muscle with the wild scared eyes of a child. The hint of timidity, so long as he had kept his pride, had been endurable, even rather sweet. But breakdown was something far different. It was strange that it could not be excused, forgiven, forgotten. From now on it would be less a marriage of woman and man, more a marriage of woman and child. He had lost the right to demand possession. He could only beg for it, with humbleness.

But, diminished as he was, she still wanted all that was left of him. She saw the shame in him. She let him move close and put his arms around her. “Betty…”

She let him talk into her ear. She listened to the explanation. She did not give it her full attention. She was thinking of what they could do to assure safety. And she listened to the odd thudding sound that was making the whole house tremble, an evisceral trembling, as of a home built near the tracks of a railroad where a train went endlessly by.

Steve Maiden stood inn the half shelter of the west wall of the bedroom and looked through the window hole where shutters and glass and frame had been. The room was open to the sky. The house was tilted to the east at about a six degree angle, he estimated. The water was perhaps a foot below the second floor level. It did not seem possible that it could come higher.