Seaview (37 page)

She did not exactly wonder why the young boy messenger had to die so violently down there. She needed nothing in the way of philosophical explanation of such things and never had. But he was so sweet and harmless, she thought, the place of his death so isolate from human concern, and she did think that it would have been good to note the circumstances through tender talk. Who else was left to give some proper weight to his passing but the two of them here? She said a silent prayer of sorts for the boy, something outside her own concerns and Allen's as well, something she realized was in all ways beyond him as a possible thing to do. When she was finished, she thought to help him out, and she said:

“Help me to sit down by the wall there, please.”

He took her arm and helped her over to the wall and squatted down as she lowered herself. Then he got up and got his golf bag and brought it over to her. When he moved it, he felt something about its weight, and then he remebered the gun and the binoculars he had put in the zipper pouch. He handed the bag down to her so she could use it as an awkward pillow, and she took hold of it, propping it up beside her against the outer wall,
and leaned against it. The smell of its leather was familiar and almost human. He reached in and pulled his four-iron by the head out of the bag's mouth, and then he squatted beside it and got a handful of Rams out of the small zipper compartment and stood up.

“The gun and the binoculars are in the pouch,” he said. “I guess I better do something, better go over there and see what's up, get us some help out of here, okay? Will you be okay?”

“Okay, right,” she said. “I'll be here. Be careful.”

“Okay,” he said, and he seemed ready to speak again, to say something more extended, but the air came out of his mouth without any words in it except, “Bye-bye.” He raised his hand and waved his fingers at her, and she raised her own hand and waved in the same way back at him. He turned then and went to the opening in the core, and then he started down the spiral.

 

 

SHE APPRECIATED THE SOFT BREEZE THAT CAME IN through the half-open window on the other side. She was where he had told her to stay, pressed in the wedge between seat and door, her right leg up and stretched out on the seat. Her arm lay in her lap, and the breeze cooled the sunburn she had gotten from having it on the window sill as they were driving cross country. She could see much of the staggered line of uniformed men at the edge of the campground. She watched them, but they did nothing of interest. After the group of Indians came down the hill from the golf course and one of them had spoken with one of the uniformed men, she watched as some of the guards left and the Indians took their places. The Indians wore various kinds of headdresses and buckskin shirts, but from the waist down they were dressed in jeans and work pants and tennis shoes. They looked, even in their rough wear, more interesting than the uniformed men, more various in their gracefulness in standing. She watched to see if they did anything she could spend time with, but they, like the military men, did very little.

She knew she was not biding her time any longer. It was just
that she felt inert right then, and the thing she would soon do would get done when she felt like doing it. It was not an important thing at all for her. It was just to make a formal ending. She was already done in the way she had to be, and after she went and got in the tent, she would just do what she wanted to do.

It was no specific event. He had done nothing out of the ordinary, and she could not really even think of it as a slow accumulation of things. It was not her birthday, though she had been thinking recently of its passing a month ago, and she had been thinking of Annie, too, but not in any serious way. All she knew was that when she had awakened in the bed in the motel that morning, she had heard some birds singing outside; she had listened to their clear songs, and then she knew that she would be going.

She sat for a little while longer, and then she swung her leg down, off the seat and turned in it and opened the door and got out of the car. She walked around the car and went to the tent, where he had told her, with that smile of his, she could also sit if she felt like it. It was not that she felt like it, but that she wanted to feel this last limitation to see if it would be like she thought it would be. She got in the tent and sat down in the cramped space. The canvas was catching the sun that had come through the clouds, diffusing it, and there was a golden glow inside the tent. She couldn't sit straight up without hitting her head on the top, and she sat hunched over. She could feel just how foolish it was to sit there, and she thought he would think she would try it in the way she was doing now, but that he would think she would feel some pleasure when she did it. It did feel nice, in its way; the light was fine, but what she felt had nothing to do with rules. She sighed, then opened up the flap of the tent, pushing the slit open. She pushed up from her haunches and crawled out through the slit, head first, turning her shoulders slightly, and got to her feet and stretched her body.

She went back to the trunk of the car, opened it, and got her suitcase out of it. It was a small canvas case and very light, and she lifted it easily. She didn't close the trunk. Then she went back
to the passenger side of the car, put her suitcase on the ground, and got in. She reached up to the rearview mirror and took hold of the medallion that hung down on its thick chain and slipped the chain from around the mirror, taking the medallion down. It was the one he usually wore, but it belonged to her. She held it in the palm of her hand and jiggled it. It was heavy and solid, and she could feel the embossed complex of rods and wires with her fingers. Then she took the chain in both hands and slipped her head through the opening, putting the medallion on.

She got out of the car and picked up her suitcase from the ground. As she bent to lift it, the medallion swung slowly at the end of its chain. When she rose up, she heard the two sharp notes of a bobwhite. They came from the hillside to her right and were very loud; she could tell the bird was close. They seemed to cut through what overcast was left and be part of the quality of the coming sunlight. She turned away then, from the direction of the sea, and leaving the tent and the campground, she began her walk to the highway.

 

 

RICHARD WAS NO MORE THAN A HUNDRED YARDS FROM the tower when he saw Allen materialize in the dark, vacant space of the cutstone opening that was the doorway. He was a little away from cover and at a level with the base of the tower, and when Allen stopped in the frame, a golf club in one hand across his chest, a fat bulge in the bottom of his left pocket, Richard thought he was looking directly at him and had an urge to jerk the gun from his belt, raise it, and fire. But then Allen was gone, having turned out of the opening, moving quickly to his right and trotting into the pines behind the tower. In a moment, Richard could no longer see him. He stood in his tracks, felt he wanted to enter the dark doorway, made his decision quickly, and started to run toward the tower. When he got to it, he cut around it as Allen had done and started after him. The growth was thick, and there was some sunlight in it, but he knew nothing about tracking and could not read signs, so he guessed at the direction Allen
had taken, and moving in a slight crouch, though it was not necessary—the pine growth was higher than a man—he stayed on his level on the ridge and headed in the direction of the sea.

It took Richard no more than ten minutes to get there, but that was enough time for the sweat to have risen out of him. What he had thought was a trail had petered out, and he had to struggle through heavy growth that cut at his arms and tore his clothing in places. His gun kept slipping down into his pants at his belt, and he had to stop often to adjust it. Once he tried to put it in his pocket, but his pockets were small slits and he couldn't get it in. He tried carrying it in his hand, but that was no good either; he needed both hands free to push the brush away before him. Finally, he came to the edge of the cliff.

He was half way over it before he knew he was there. The pines ran right up to it, he was a little dizzy from the pace and work of his movement, and he stepped over the edge. It was only reflex that made him grab at the pines. He went over, but he had a hold on a thick branch, and he jerked himself back from the edge and stood still on the lip, breathing heavily and trying to listen. There were birds singing, and there was the heavy sound of the breakers coming in, and there was no possibility of hearing anything else, so he stood still and waited until his breath could return to normal. The beach was empty. He was standing above a small inlet, and he could not see very far to his left or right. He picked pine needles from his shirt fabric and from his hair and pants. The beach and the sea below him were beautiful in their emptiness and solitude and unconcern, but he was not moved by them. When he had his clothes adjusted, the gun set firm in his belt, he began to work his way to the left along the edge of the cliff.

He had gone no more than thirty yards when the growth around him began to thin out. The cliff sloped down slightly, then up again in the distance, and at the place where it crested the growth got high and heavy. He saw that to his right the escarpment running down to the beach was more gradual in pitch than where he had almost fallen over, and he moved to the edge and
stepped over it, getting himself below the lip so that he would have some cover as he moved on to the next crest. He worked his way along below the edge, and when he got to the higher pines, where the cliff steepened sharply again, he came back over the lip. He entered the pines and stopped and listened again. He could hear something quite close to him at the cliff's edge. He could not identify the sound, but he knew it was Allen. He edged as quietly as he could through the thick stand of pine, and before he got to the edge of the cliff, he saw him.

There was an open place, a kind of sea perch, at the cliff's edge. It was surrounded by heavy growth, and there was a path at the back of it that headed into the golf course. The area was a rough rectangle, about twenty-five-feet long. Allen was standing at the far end of the rectangle, away from Richard and facing him. The Golden Rams were on the ground in front of him, and he was standing over them with the golf club in his hands. He chipped one ball and then another, hitting them cleanly and with sharp little clicks, sending them in the air, about a foot off the ground, ten feet down the rectangle. Then he went and got the balls, brought them back, and chipped them again.

Richard watched him and began to fear him. The thing he was doing was very odd. It was outside of Richard's previous experience of what odd might be, and he felt that he wanted to understand what was going on. Was he waiting for him, biding his time in this way with his golf? It didn't look like it; there was something more serious about the way he hit the balls, something very concentrated, contained, and in no way casual, and there was such obvious skill in it that Richard felt fear in knowing that he had no skill that could be compared to it. Then he began to like the feel of the fear he had, and when Allen walked back after chipping the balls for a third time, Richard stepped out from the pine cover and entered the open space. He did it as quietly, but as quickly, as he could, and Allen heard him and turned around and faced him, dropping the Rams on the ground.

They stood at opposite ends of the enclosed rectangle. They
were alone together in a peaceful place, and yet it did not seem so peaceful: the clouds were moving and changing; there was light action in the sky, and the shadows kept altering their shapes between them. They could hear the surf rushing, and they caught glints from the sun hitting into the swells in the corners of their eyes. They both felt a need to speak or do something at least that would join them to the action of sky, ground, and sea, some kind of activity, some committed entrance to the changing world. Had they spoken out, casually, they would have brought up talk that was directed into the fixtures of the past, their time together in that solid place; they would have spoken, sentimentally, about life directions, or shared musical taste, or women, or the touchstones of common events. They knew enough of where they were to know that the talk could not be of the future and felt the hollows in their stomachs in knowing, finally, that it was indeterminate; useless to speak of it, a foolish enterprise. And what of this present, Allen thought, how escape from that?

It was Richard, finally, who found the way to handle it, but it was incidental that it should be him; it could as well have been Allen; there was not much difference. They both shifted a little at their ends of the enclosed space. They did tentative things with their knees, hips, and shoulders. The high brush seemed to push in on the three closed sides.

“This is it, man,” Richard said. “Are you ready?”

“I'm ready,” Allen said, and he adjusted his grip on the shaft of the four-iron.

They both felt the romance of it, and they both liked the feeling. Their brief words seemed to echo in the air, and they felt a strange kind of gratitude that each had spoken the words correctly and with sufficient drama. Each waited for the other to make his move. They felt they stood there for a very long time, looking at each other.

It was Richard who moved first. His hand came across his stomach and groped for the gun grip in his belt. He got it and jerked at the weapon. But the hammer had gotten hooked in his
belt loop, and it would not come free. The crotch of his pants pulled up against his groin as he twisted and jerked again. Then Allen was moving. He fell into his stance and started the club head back quickly. When it came to the level of his shoulder, he squeezed the grip in his left hand and began to whip the club down at the swelling Ram. But it came down too quickly, and he knew that the head was gone. It had left the shaft in the force of his backswing, had probably loosened when he had hit the hangglider pilot, and it was flying behind him, spinning in the air into the brush. He saw Richard jerk again at the gun, the bottoms of his pants almost to his knees, the whiteness of his shins ridiculous above his black tennis shoes. He came automatically through the swing, and as his head came up, the tip of the headless shaft passed over the top of the ball, then continuing over his left shoulder. As he brought it down again, he pointed it at Richard as if it were a rapier, ineffectual at this distance, and then he saw the gun come loose as the belt tore free, the pants fly ripping away, and Richard's hand thrown up from the force over his head with the gun in it. He had an urge to leap for him, but before he could do it the gun came back down, and Richard, with right arm extended, fell into a crouch and brought his left hand to his right wrist, aiming at Allen's chest. They both stood very still. Then Richard grinned at Allen, and then he pulled the trigger.