“Is it necessary?”
“This is flat country, but I think the water is going to come a lot higher. Don’t let me make you nervous.”
“I’m not in the least bit nervous.”
He stared at her, then smiled again. “You don’t look the type who is too stupid to be scared.”
“Well! Thank you.”
“I guess you’re just a remarkably steady woman. We may need you around here.” He turned and left. She kept smiling for a few moments after he left, and then the smile faded. It was rarely that any man gave such an impression of enormous quiet competence. She wondered what he did for a living. He very obviously did not work behind a desk. There was no hint of softness.
She opened the door for them as they came in laden with luggage. It took nearly all her strength to hold the door against the twisting clutch of the wind. Had the door been on the windward side of the house, it would have been unusable. When they came in they looked frayed and breathless.
When the big man called Malden brought her things in, set them down, she saw the box that contained the bronze box of ashes. It shocked her that they should be brought into this house—and it surprised her to think that for a little time she had forgotten them. For a few hurtful seconds she missed David so intensely that she nearly cried out in the suddenness of pain. For this was the sort of thing that David could and would have risen to. His gaiety would have been infectious, his courage unquestioned. Calamity had always sharpened his wit and his perception. It was almost as though the life he led had never demanded enough of him. In spite of his look of blond frailty, he had been planned for a more violent age. Perhaps, during the Korean war, before she had known him, he had lived completely. He had been a naval aviator, a fighter pilot.
Malden stood close to her and said, “Is something the matter?” His perception surprised her.
“No. Nothing’s the matter, thank you.” She forced a smile. And then began to wish she had told him. But that was absurd. You did not tell a man you had just met that you were disturbed because he had brought your late husband’s ashes into a room where you stood.
He studied her for a few moments and then said, “Know anything about hurricanes?”
“Just what everybody knows, I guess.”
“It’s pretty dramatic out there right now, and not too bad yet. Not as bad as it’s going to be. It’s worth taking a look at. If you wish, we could go out and take a look at it. When you understand something, it isn’t quite as terrifying.”
“I don’t think I’m terrified, Mr. Malden, but I would like to see it.”
“I’ll keep you from being blown away, Mrs. Sherrel.”
They went out into the full noise of the gale. It caught hard at her as they passed the corner of the house, and his hand was strong on her upper arm. They climbed over the fallen tree and went to the shelter of the blue and white convertible. From there they could look west through a wide gap in the trees. All the sky was a strange dark coppery color. Long cloud banks moved swiftly toward them. Her eyelashes were pushed back against her eyelids, her black hair snapped at the nape of her neck. When she tried to speak the words were blown out of her mouth.
He had to speak loudly, his lips close to her ear, to be heard. “The name comes from huracan. That’s a Taino word. It means evil spirit. See those higher clouds? Altostratus and alto-cumulus. With clear spaces between. They’re moving east. They radiate out from the eye. Now see the low stuff? It’s moving northeast. That puts us in the bad quadrant, where you can get the worst violence. This is a small one. The eye won’t be more than four or five miles in diameter and it ought to be off in about that direction.” He pointed slightly northwest. “And not too far off the coast. Those cloud ridges will go up to seven or eight miles high. Oh-oh, here comes another rain squall.” The first wind-driven drops stung her face. Malden opened the car and they got in. She slid over under the wheel. The rain struck so violently it sounded like hail. The car rocked with the push of the wind.
“When is the worst coming?” she asked.
“In an hour. Maybe a little more, a little less, the way it looks.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
She saw a faint grimace, like a fleeting expression of distaste. “It used to be sort of a hobby, meteorology. I had the usual gadgets. Wind velocity, rainfall, aneroid barometer. Drew my own weather maps. But … I gave it up.” His expression changed. For a moment he looked almost boyish. “This is the first one of these babies I’ve ever seen.”
The clouds overhead were very black. There was a sudden piercing blue-white flash, a great crack of thunder. She started violently and forced a smile and said, “Is it supposed to do that too?”
“Sure. It does everything. It has everything. Electrical disturbances, tornadoes.” The blackness moved swiftly by. Another one was coming. In the interval the rain ceased and the day was temporarily brighter, but it was the brightness of dusk, and was suffused with the odd coppery glow so that the colors of all things looked strange, unreal.
“We better get back,” he said, and opened the car door. He started to step out, and then turned and frowned at her and said, “We’re going to have to wade back. Look here.”
She looked. In that short interval the water had come up a frightening distance. It was nearly to the car hubs. Malden did an astonishing thing. He cupped his hand, scooped some up and tasted it.
“What in the world?” she said.
“Salt. We’re getting this from the Gulf. They must be catching hell along the coast.”
She took her shoes off. He took them from her and put them in the side pockets of the jacket he had put on. He helped her out. Her feet were toughened from walking on the beaches. There was a dip before the house where the water was deeper. She clung to him, holding her skirt above her knees with her other hand. They went into the house, into the relative quiet of the house where the thousand evils of the wind were muffled. She felt warm and glowing and oddly drowsy.
“I guess that was a fiasco,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at him in surprise. “But it wasn’t! I loved it! I wouldn’t have missed it.”
“You got the hem of your skirt wet.”
“Not very much, really.” He gave her back her sandals and she slipped them on her wet feet and smiled up at him.
He looked at the others. The man named Dorn was being helped toward the stairway. Everything had been carried upstairs. He turned back to her and took her over to a corner away from the others. He spoke so only she could hear. “I don’t want to alarm you, Mrs. Sherrel.”
“Virginia.”
“All right. Virginia. I’m Steve. I don’t want to alarm you, but this place isn’t too sturdy. The sills are rotten. Some of the foundation has crumbled. It may go.”
She put her hand to her throat. “What then?”
“I’ll stay close to you when the worst comes. I’ll try to get us out of here. And maybe the two of us can help with those kids. I don’t like the way Dorn acts. It may be a skull fracture. When the house starts to go, if it does, we get out fast. The water will be deep by then. I don’t know how deep. Just west of the south bridge, on this side, there’s land that’s a little bit higher, and some trees that are dense and look easy to climb. Got that direction?”
“Just west of the south bridge. Yes. I’ve got it.”
“Good. I wasn’t going to tell you and then I decided you wouldn’t panic.”
“What made you decide that?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I just decided you wouldn’t, Virginia.”
“And if the house doesn’t go?”
“I think we’re going to be here some time. We better each stake out a soft piece of floor upstairs. I imagine your husband will be worried about you when he doesn’t hear.”
She looked down at the rings on her left hand, looked up at him. “He died, Steve. The middle of last month.”
“I’m sorry.”
She felt the tears
in her eyes. “I was terribly sorry. But when somebody wants to die, when they take their own life, you can’t feel quite as sorry, can you? Angry and hurt and … lost. But not quite as sorry. Do you have a wife, Steve? I’m sorry. That’s a bold question. I guess hurricanes make you … skip the usual devices.”
He answered her expressionlessly, his face like a mask. “No. I have no wife. I’d better see Flagan and find out if there’s anything else he wants done.”
She watched his broad back disappear as he went up the stairs. She wondered why the mention of a wife was such a taboo. There were odd depths and silences in the man—like areas of old pain. A strong man. Strong all the way through, all the way to the bone. The song of the wind was but a minor distraction to her, a matter of little importance, while she thought about Malden. It was disconcerting to feel such a strong attraction to him. The very strength of the attraction made it suspect, gave it the flavor of rebound, made her wonder if it was but the reflection of her own vulnerability. His hands were good and his eyes were good. She wondered what it would be like to be kissed by that firm mouth, held by those strong arms. She suddenly realized that she was thinking like a schoolgirl dreaming of the new boy in class. It was ridiculous.
A great hand pushed against the house. She felt a subtle shift of the worn flooring under her feet. For a moment her heart closed her throat. Then the floor was steady again. She exhaled a bit tremulously. This was a time to be practical. She remembered the pair of jeans in her luggage. Dress properly for your hurricane. Jeans and a blouse and a cardigan. And a scarf for her hair. At least it would be a temporary project.
Upstairs, in the hallway, rain water pattered with tin sounds into the pots and pans set under the roof leaks. Flagan straightened up from peering into one of the pans and smiled at her and said, “This is one way to get some drinking water. Better get yourself a boudoir staked out, Miz Sherrel, before all the best suites are gone. Why don’t you bunk in with the Dorns? They’re in that room there. Maybe you can help a little with those kids.”
“I’d be glad to.”
“That lady’s got her hands full. I’m in this room here with Charlie Himbermark and Steve Malden. The three kids from the truck are in that room, and the newlyweds have got that last room over there. I don’t know which is your bags, but you find them and take them in with the Dorns, will you?”
“Yes, Mr. Flagan.”
“We got the commissary set up in my room. Cookies and candy and oranges and some coffee. The water’ll be in there too. You’ll have one of the only two rooms with doors. The newlyweds grabbed onto the other one.”
She found her two suitcases and the box in the room where the two boys and the girl from the panel truck were. They were without luggage. The girl lay on the floor, on her back, looking blankly at the ceiling. The younger boy stood at the window, peering through a crack in the blinds. The older one sat crosslegged cleaning his fingernails with a long bladed knife that glittered in the dim light of the room. Virginia Sherrel thought him an odd-looking young man. He had a trim powerful look, but a strange blankness in his face. The features were good, but his eyes were peculiarly expressionless.
“These are my things,” she said brightly. “I have to bunk in with the children.”
“You wouldn’t mean in here, lady,” the blond boy said.
She stared at him. “Of course not.” The other boy had turned from the window and was staring at her. She was annoyed to find that she was blushing. “In with those Dorn children.”
The blond one smiled at her. “Why don’t you stay right here with us, lady? We’ll tell jokes and sing songs and all that stuff.” He managed to give the words a sound of the promise of evil pleasures. His smile was crude and impertinent.
“No thank you.”
“Suit yourself, lady.”
The girl had turned her head. They all looked at her with much the same expression. A sort of blank obscene amusement. She had planned to make two trips. But she got the box under her right arm and picked up the two heavy suitcases. No one made any offer to help her. She went awkwardly out bearing the heavy load. She was very glad to leave that room.
The door of the Dorns’ room was open. The man lay on folded blankets, his eyes shut, his head half turned toward the wall. The woman was shushing the children and struggling with the folding mechanism of the crib. She looked at Virginia Sherrel with an expression of exasperation close to tears. Virginia set her things down and hurried to help the woman. Between them they soon had the crib set up. They introduced themselves in low tones. She was Jean Dorn. She had a pleasant pretty face, drawn with lines of strain.
While Jean put the little girl in the crib, Virginia looked around the room. The room was tiny, no larger than ten by twelve. The Dorns had been carrying a great deal of luggage in the station wagon. The most incongruous item was the set of battered golf clubs in one corner.
“I won’t be crowding you too much?” Virginia said.
“No. No, I’m glad you’re here. I’m afraid to be alone. You go to sleep, Jan. Please, honey. Stevie, you go back and lie down where I told you.”
“How is your husband?”
“He acts so strange. It scares me. He acts as if he hardly knew us. As if he was way way off some place. I can’t even tell if he’s sleeping or unconscious. When I shake him he mumbles but he doesn’t seem to wake all the way up. He ought to be in a hospital.” The helpless tears began to run down her face.
Virginia put her arms around her. “Take it easy, Jean. Try to take it easy. We’re stuck here but they’ll be coming after us as soon as the storm is over. He’ll probably be all right.”
“He’s hurt. He’s badly hurt.”
Virginia comforted her as best she could. She took her bags into a corner, closed the door, put on jeans, a heavier blouse, a pale blue cardigan. The storm seemed louder, more violent, when the door was shut. She opened the door again. Steve Malden stood in the hallway, talking to Flagan and Himbermark. Steve saw her and motioned her over.
“How is Dorn?” he asked.
“In a sort of stupor. Semi-conscious I guess you’d call it.”
“He collapsed when we got him to the head of the stairs,” Flagan said. “We had to carry him into the room. Kids okay?”
“She’s got them quieted down.”
“Now I guess all we have to do is wait it out,” Mr. Himbermark said.
Virginia looked at them and knew that Steve hadn’t told them his fear that the house would go. She looked quickly at Steve. He said, “That’s a better outfit you’ve got on, Virginia.”
She smiled at him. She thought of the house going. She thought of all the worldly goods of the Dorns piled there in the small room. Her smile went away rather quickly and she felt pale.
“Come visit our bachelor quarters a minute, Miz Sherrel,” Flagan said. “Got something for you.” The three men followed her into the room. Flagan uncapped a thermos and set out the four small plastic cups from inside the cap. He ceremoniously filled each with bourbon. They lifted the plastic cups.
“To a house by the side of the road,” Flagan said.
They drank. The bourbon was tepid. It scalded her throat, but spread out within her, bringing its spurious warmth and courage.
“Those three from the truck are strange acting,” she said.
“They’ll stay right in their room,” Steve said.
She stared at him. “Why?”
His smile was odd. “We smell each other,” he said.
“What on earth do you mean?”
“As soon as I tried to talk to the older one we smelled each other, Virginia. A scent unmistakable. I smelled a thief and he smelled the law.”
She stared at him and felt that it did not fit, that he could not be the law. But as she continued to stare she saw all at once that he was. That he was stamped with it. That it was a part of his strength, and perhaps more. “So that’s what you do.”
“On a federal level.”
“F.B.I.?
” Flagan asked.
“No. But I’ve gone through quite a few of their courses.” He didn’t offer any further explanation. Virginia lifted the plastic cup to drink the last of the bourbon. At that moment a great fist of wind struck again and the house trembled and seemed to shift. She spilled some of the bourbon and her eyes went wide.
“Jesus!” Flagan said, his head cocked, as though listening for it to happen again.
“Johnny!” Himbermark said. “The house is all right, isn’t it? Isn’t it, Johnny?”
“Shut up, Charlie,” Flagan said wearily. He walked over to the window and looked through a fairly wide gap in the boards. It was a gap that kept this room lighter than the others. They saw his heavy back stiffen. He whirled around. “Come take a look at this!” His voice had lost its heavy aplomb. It sounded thinner and younger.
Virginia stood beside Steve when she looked, aware of his comforting bulk beside her. The water had come up. She looked at her car first. It was even with the lower edge of the windows. Scud whipped along the top of the brownish water and small waves slapped at the windows. The fallen tree trunk was covered. She could not see the lead car, the Cadillac, very well. The road was slightly lower there. The water was half way up the windows. The hood was covered. The gleaming roof was above the water, shiny as the wing case of a water beetle.
“Faster than I figured,” she heard Steve murmur. He touched her shoulder lightly. “Stick around. I’m going to take a look downstairs.”
When Steve reached the foot of the stairs he saw that the water had come into the house. It stood about six inches deep in the room. Wind that came through gaps ruffled the surface of it. When the house shook the tremor of the walls made ripples that met at the middle of the room. In the faint light the water looked black, oily. He decided he would try to estimate the rate of climb. He could see the slight hump on the surface of the water where it was boiling up through the place where the floor boards had rotted away. He looked at his watch, found a mark on the far wall that seemed to be about six inches above the water level. He sat on one of the steps, took out a cigarette and lighted it and began to wait.
Murder in the Wind Page 18