Sarah's Window (19 page)

John lay unconscious for a long time, and all the while the creek was rising. The waters found the shallow quarry easily, spilled freely over the ledge, cascading down the rock face to fill up the basin where he lay facedown on the stone floor. He looked quite unlike himself without that brittle energy that had always animated his face, and in this state he bore a chilling resemblance to the lifeless form that had lured him here—a sun-bleached coyote skull nailed to the exposed root of an upended cottonwood, an old tree weakened and toppled by the wind. From time to time the airborne root swayed and creaked and groaned, and the skull bobbed in the darkness.

But the wind was silent now, and the fog had lifted. A baby cried in the distance. Finally

He grew conscious gradually, as he felt the water move up his face, felt it rising around his head, over his fingertips, climbing up his legs. He panicked and choked.

Finally, he was able to lift himself on one shoulder, draw his leg up and brace himself with a hand, but his head began to spin and he collapsed into the water. He took a deep breath and rose again, crawling through the water on hands and knees. When he tried to stand, nausea broke over him and his head filled with awful pain. He sank to his knees in dry heaves, his stomach gripped with convulsions. For a moment all he could feel was his sickness; he waited until it passed, then cleaned his face with the muddy water.

He made it to his feet and staggered through the water, but whenever he tried to look up and get his bearings, he grew dizzy. He wasn't even sure which way he was heading, didn't know how far he had come. The floodwaters were spilling quickly into the quarry, dislodging branches and loose stone from the rock above and sweeping them over the ledge in a steady cascade. Stumbling through the swift current, he found a place where the limestone ridge had faulted and began to pull himself up the side of a rubble-strewn bluff, fighting against the force of the rushing waters. Time and again he would slip, and he would curse the river and then curse himself. At last he dragged himself to the top, only to find the current so powerful he could barely stand.

The road and the fields had disappeared underwater and the quarry had been transformed into a wide and treacherous crossflow of rapids and eddies. He slogged forward, through twisting, narrow lanes between columns of stone blocks, wishing with all his heart Will would cry that loud, racking cry of his so he could find his way back. He scanned the darkness for his car and tried in vain to orient himself. At last he caught a glimpse of a bulky shadow low in the water, and he stumbled forward, pressing against the force of the flow. He could see it was the car, gliding slowly with the current. The headlights still glowed, but only faintly, like two dim, watery moons. It struck him he must have been unconscious long enough for the headlights to drain the battery.

Plowing through the current, he reached the car, caught hold of the bumper, and pulled himself alongside the back. Will was only barely visible through the window. The child had managed to squirm out of his car seat and had slipped to the floor, snagging his yellow raincoat on the latch, and now it was wound around his body. The water was rising around him, and he huddled there, exhausted and terrified. John tried to open the door as the BMW bobbed along, but it would not budge. He shoved away from the car and plunged underwater, fishing blindly on the bottom of the quarry floor until his fingers found a loose stone. Stone in hand, he shot back to the surface and dragged his way around to the side of the car again. He slung his head back, shaking the water from his face, and when he peered inside again Will was no longer visible. In that brief moment the waters had risen over the edge of the seat and he had sunk beneath them.

John fell upon the car with a fury, pounding until the glass shattered. Bashing away the shards from the frame he plunged inside and grabbed his son's hand. At that moment the car was caught by an eddy, and with John hanging through the window it began a slow spin. It hit a block of stone and tilted, and water spilled through the window. John could feel the jagged glass cutting into his stomach as he worked frantically with both hands underwater to free his child. Finally, Will's raincoat gave way, and John lifted him out the window.

There was no time to do anything because the water was up to his thighs and he could barely hold himself upright. Unless he found a high place quickly, out of the reach of the flood, they would both surely be swept away. Holding Will over his head, he staggered through the water toward the columns of quarried blocks silhouetted against the sky.

The water was hip level now, and the current swept him along with an alarming force. He plowed forward, holding steady against the flux, struggling to keep his balance with the child still held aloft. The dizziness returned intermittently, and he knew he was losing blood and was afraid he might lose consciousness, but he made it finally to the base of a cluster of quarried blocks.

Stretching to the full length of his height, he lifted Will onto one of the tall columns, dragged himself up after him, and collapsed facedown on the stone block. Then he raised himself on his elbows, put his mouth to the child's face, and breathed what little breath he had left into him. He kept it up as long as he could, even when he grew faint. The child felt so different now, all the energy released, the muscles relaxed, not tense and fighting, and John wished with all his heart for even a whimper, just one small sign of life. He struggled to remain conscious, trying to revive the child, but then everything around him seemed to recede. The water sounded distant and he couldn't feel himself any longer, couldn't feel the pain in his stomach or the pounding of his skull. It seemed there was just this tiny child, so small, and still.

The wind chattered in the cottonwoods nearby, and the stars blinked overhead. The quarry filled and the river moved on, and John was not alert to a great energy moving toward him.

Sarah had spent the night on the sofa downstairs, stretched out on her back in her jeans with Billy's oversized waders on her feet and his cell phone clutched to her stomach. Susan had called the house around ten and spoken to Billy. She was worried sick about John, said he wasn't home yet and she hadn't heard from him. Then Sarah got on the phone to Joy, and Clay promised they'd begin a search at dawn.

"Sarah?" Joy said.

"Yeah."

"God, it didn't even ring."

Sarah hitched herself up into a sitting position. "Yeah, so? Where is he?"

"He's safe, honey. They found him."

There was a long silence on the line while Sarah fought back a sudden rush of tears.

"Thank God," she muttered.

"He wasn't very far from you. Just down at Thut's."

"What was he doing there?"

"Don't know. Maybe got lost in the fog."

"Is he okay?"

There was a slight hesitation. "He's in a coma."

Sarah dropped her feet over the side of the sofa, and they splashed softly in the water. "In a coma?"

"I don't know all the details."

"Where's Will?"

In the silence that followed Sarah seemed to freeze. She was aware only of the sound of her heart pounding in her chest.

Joy softened her voice. "He didn't make it, honey."

"What do you mean? What happened?"

"He drowned."

"Will drowned?" Sarah asked in a small voice that made Joy's stomach twist in knots.

Joy took a deep breath. "All I know is they found the both of 'em stranded up on top of one of those columns in the quarry, and John was unconscious and almost dead." Joy couldn't finish. "Oh, baby, I'm so sorry...."

Time slipped away from her, and Sarah sat there with her feet in the water and pale morning light filtering through the drawn drapes, Billy's cell phone to her ear and her hand over her eyes. She sat there listening to the silence, conscious of her own breathing and Joy's patient presence on the other end of the line. She heard Joy light a cigarette, heard her cough a time or two. Joy didn't hang up on her, though, was ready to wait as long as it took, didn't try to rush her. Finally, Sarah's voice cracked across the line.

"I need to get out of here," she said.

"Where's your truck?"

There was no reply.

"Honey, where's your truck?"

The hand slid down the face, over the mouth, and her eyes stared blankly into the shadows of the house.

"I can't stay here," and her voice grated against the silence.

"Sarah, where'd you leave your truck?"

"Up at Thut's."

"The quarry?"

"It died on me a couple of days
ago.
I just left it. Didn't have time to mess with it."

"Well, it's a goner now. Clay said the quarry's flooded."

"Come get me."

"I can't get in there."

"I'll walk out. I can cut up across high pasture over to the highway. You can pick me up out on 50."

"Honey, practically the whole damn highway is washed out! All the way to Florence! This county's one big lake right now!"

Sarah stood and waded over to the large picture window and drew aside the drapes and looked out at the overcast sky.

"If I can get to Florence, will you come get me?"

"Sarah, you be careful."

"Just come get me," she answered, and she sloshed toward the kitchen with the telephone crimped to her shoulder while she zipped up her jeans. "Okay?"

"What are you gonna do?"

"Don't worry about me."

"Well, I do!"

"Do something for me, please. Call Clay and see if he can find out where they've taken him."

There was a heavy silence. "Which one?"

Despite her tenacity and stubbornness, and her intimate knowledge of that place, Sarah could not best the river. She stood on a bluff that morning and surveyed a land strange and foreign to her. She had seen the hills transformed and molded by the seasons, painted in the muted browns of fall and the vivid greens of spring, blanketed in white snow and baking in the scorching light of an August day. But she had never seen them like this. The lowlands were now a continuous ribbon of water wending through the valley, and of human settlements there remained only the top story of a house or two or the roof of a barn. Out of this sea the low hills rose like islands, like something cut loose and set adrift.

It took nearly a week for the floodwater to leave the house, and all the while they were kept busy sweeping, had to keep the muddy water in constant motion so it wouldn't settle and dry to a hard sediment on the floor. During that time Sarah learned they had buried little Will up in Emporia, some cemetery nobody'd heard of. Joy thought it wasn't proper, thought they should have given Clarice a say-so in the matter, or at least buried him in Lawrence, where the Wildes lived. But Sarah said there wasn't any point in that, said none of them would ever visit the grave.

He felt Susan's hand gently squeezing his own and heard her reassuring him, telling him he was going to be all right. For a long time he lay there with voices swimming around him. He heard his mother and thought he might have heard his father, and there were sounds of doors opening and closing and brisk footsteps and sharp voices echoing down hallways.

"Don't try to talk, honey." It was Susan's voice, and he heard the rustling sheets and the scraping of a chair.

"Where's Will?" he whispered groggily.

He tried to turn his head toward her and felt a sudden dull pain.

"Stay still, John. You had a skull fracture," she said.

He opened his eyes, but the light was bright and painful and he closed them again. Sounds were jumbled and loud. They were whispering and he could only pick out certain words.

He tried again to open his eyes. They were all there, looking down at him with worried faces. Susan was sitting at his bedside, holding his hand.

They whisked him away, took him straight from the hospital to the airport and put him on a plane back to California. Armand Wilde had arranged for one of his graduate students to drive the Range Rover back to California for them, sparing them the long two-day-plus haul. The moving van had already arrived in San Francisco, but John knew there was more to their urgency. They closed ranks around him and secrecy informed their every move. He suspected they were rushing to remain one step ahead of him, making the decisions for him before he had time to reflect, giving him no opportunity to take up a position of opposition, to resist them. When John regained consciousness, Will had already been put in his grave, and from that moment on the child's name never crossed their lips. It seemed as if Susan and his parents were making every effort to erase an unfortunate episode in their lives, to weaken whatever power it still held over him.

They were busy that first week settling back into their home, moving in the few pieces of furniture Susan had kept from her mother's estate, unpacking John's books and all their clothing and linens and dishes. Still, Susan found time to meet with a headhunter, and by the end of the week she had set up four interviews. There was a brightness to his wife during these days that she tried in vain to soften with a mask of sobriety, but John knew better, knew she had no burden of grief to bear.

She came home one Saturday with three business suits from Saks, poured John a glass of cold Chablis, sat down with him in their living room with a view of the ocean, and told him about two job offers, both high-level positions with investment firms.

He sat and listened, drank only a little of his wine, and when she tried to solicit his opinion he turned lusterless blue eyes on her and said, "I need to talk about him. We never talked about it. Not once."

The smile left her face, and she sat back and crossed her legs. John thought her shoes seemed new, too, but he could have been wrong.

Susan fingered the sweating wineglass. "It was just so painful..."

"Was it?"

She glanced up sharply. "Of course it was. I felt it deeply." She ran her hand along the smooth leather back of the sofa. "But not as deeply as you did. I'm aware of that."

"I need to talk about him."

With pinched lips he looked away, and she knew he must be fighting back tears.

"John..." she whispered, and she reached for his hand.

He fell quiet, as though he were sifting through troubling thoughts, but he seemed to be getting control of himself and she felt relieved.

She patted his hand, then rose and picked up her glass. "I need to start dinner."

His eyes followed her as she crossed the room.

"What did you do with all his things?"

She turned and answered soothingly, "I gave them away."

"When? Where? I never saw a thing. Not one box."

"I took care of it all."

"You didn't save anything? Not a single toy? Nothing? Not the damnedest little thing to remember him by?"

She hesitated, eyes averted, then sat down in the club chair opposite him. She set down her glass on the coffee table and leaned forward with a level gaze.

"I didn't do it callously, John. I asked. I asked your mother, and the chaplain... and my therapist..."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

"I wanted to spare you the pain." Her eyes fixed on his, and he tried to read sincerity in them, but he could not. "John, through all of this, we put you first. We had your very best interests at heart."

"And you're so damn sure you know what's best for me."

Susan sat back, crossed her arms at her waist, and turned a tight mouth toward the wide bay window where the hues of sunset spilled into the sky.

There was a tinge of bitterness when she spoke, and restrained anger. "You would have self-destructed long ago if it hadn't been for people who had your best interests in mind. And by that I mean your mother and father and me. People who love you most in the world."

He turned a stunned look on her.

She laughed sharply. "What? You think I don't know that about you?"

That evening he took himself off to his study with his books and a bottle of scotch. When he'd had enough to drink he picked up the telephone and called. Jack Bryden answered.

"Jack?"

"Who wants to know?"

"John Wilde. Is Sarah there?"

"Nope."

John waited for an elaboration of some sort, thought it would be forthcoming if he gave the old man a minute, but there was only a heavy silence coming down the line.

"When would be the best time to call back?"

"She's not here."

"When will she be back?"

"I don't keep tabs on Sarah."

He could see the old man's face behind the gruffness, see the downturned mouth and the eyes like shields.

"Yeah, okay, well, tell her I called, will you?"

There was no response, and John wanted to take the telephone and slam it into that awful wall of silence. Finally there was only a click on the other end, and then the dial tone.

He threw himself back into his work that summer. He even took up handball with a professor new to the theoretical physics group, a high-strung, fast-talking young man with neither wife nor children and little interest in either subject. The two men would reserve a court for the entire evening and play one brutal match after another, pushing each other to the limits of endurance until they were worn down. Afterward John would drag himself to the campus cafeteria and eat a hot meal before he crawled back to the lab and collapsed onto the sofa. He would go home every few days to pick up some fresh clothing, which he kept in his locker at the faculty club, and if Susan was home they would speak pleasantly, congenially, to each other, about their work, their day, but it was all anecdotal. There was never anything of substance, nothing heartfelt. It occurred to John one night as she slipped into bed beside him and turned off the light that things were very much as they used to be, and it seemed to John she was not discontent.