“They ought to leave those poor people alone,” Miguel said. “A man came to the house yesterday to ask for work. He was all hungry-looking, sort of. It would make you sick. Becky wouldn’t let him stay around, but she did give him a dollar.”
“Becky is very nice, isn’t she?” Allie said.
“Sure. She’s all right.”
“She’s attractive, too.”
“Yes,” Miguel said guardedly. “For a woman her age.”
“She’s only twenty-four or so.”
“Maybe she just seems old because she’s Luis’s wife,” Miguel said.
“But she is attractive. You think so, don’t you?”
“Hey, are you jealous of her?”
“A little. She makes me feel too young. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, I sure do. I feel that way all the time.”
“It’s all right then. If we can feel that way together—”
Miguel heard the rumble seat open as Tom and Florian came up for air. Tom was yelling something at Sandy. Yelling and waving his arms.
Sandy pulled out from behind the Chevy and roared past at full throttle, sending up a rooster-tail of spray.
“That goon is going to get us pinched,” Miguel said. “And that’s all I need. A ticket to take home to my father.” Nevertheless he speeded up to chase Sandy.
Allie asked, “Does your father want to go away again this summer?”
“He’s talking about taking a cabin at Crescent Lake—in Oregon.”
“Oh, no.”
“This time I’m really not going. I’ll talk to him and you’ll see, he’ll let me stay at home. After all, I’m no kid any more. Avery can do the cooking and I’ll look out for the house and the pool.” He glanced at her and added, “You could come over in the afternoon. We’d have the whole place to ourselves. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“What a perfect dream,” Allie said.
“I’ll manage it someway. Becky and Luis can go with him and I’ll stick around good old Los Altos with my girl.”
Allie rubbed her cheek against his shoulder contentedly. “I’m glad I’m your girl,” she said.
Ahead of them, Miguel could see the lights of traffic on El Camino and the sign of the Associated service station on the corner. Sandy wasn’t slowing down a bit. Miguel blew the horn at him and his arm appeared momentarily to make a derogatory sign, and then vanished in the car.
Miguel saw the truck seconds before Sandy did. It was pulling out of the Okie camp and it was piled high with household goods. Miguel could make out a straight-backed chair high on the load. The truck was silhouetted against the highway lights. Its headlamps were yellow-dim and nearly useless.
Miguel saw the Merc’s stoplight flare red. The car swung wide to avoid the front of the truck. But it was traveling too fast for control on the wet road and skidded, spinning broadside down the road toward the highway intersection.
“Oh, God,” Miguel breathed. Allie sat up quickly, trying to see through the smearing of the windshield wipers.
The Mercury spun completely around and struck the steel post of the arterial stop sign. A door flew open and something fell out onto the road. Two cars almost collided with the Merc as it skidded out into the center of the three-lane highway. A third car nosedived as the driver jammed on the brakes in a long slide that ended as the car struck the Mercury broadside and rolled it over on its side.
There was a dull thump, like the sound of a heavy sheet of canvas suddenly pulled taut, and the Merc burst into flames.
The rest of it was nightmarish, disconnected, shocking.
The driver of the other car was out on the highway now, waving his arms at the oncoming traffic. Instantly, there was a jam of cars and lights shining on the wet road.
And in the center, the Mercury burning.
The Chevrolet skidded to a halt beside the bent post of the stop sign. Miguel flung open his door and jumped out. Tom was right behind him. Miguel could hear Florian screaming with terror.
Something was moving in the blaze. It appeared to crawl through the shattered windshield, writhed through a pool of burning gasoline and staggered to its feet, wreathed in fire.
A shrill, woman-like shriek came continuously out of a blazing knot that might have been a human head. As the thing ran toward people who had pressed forward to see, they tumbled back in terror. The screaming rose higher and higher until it pierced the brain.
Tom covered his face with his hands.
The flaming figure ran crazily in circles, waving arms that were charred black with great red cracks in them. The fire hissed on the oil-wet asphalt.
Suddenly the torch collapsed. It seemed to melt into the pavement. The mouth became a red hole in a burnt eyeless mask, it pressed against the road, working slowly. The screaming died to a liquid mumbling that sank lower and lower and finally stopped.
Miguel turned around and hung onto the side of the car for support. He wanted to vomit, but he couldn’t. There was a constriction in his throat that threatened to gag him. People were pressing close to the smoldering bundle on the highway. They gathered around with a ghoulish murmuring. More cars were stopping on the highway, and some along San Antonio behind the Chevrolet. The cars were like glare-eyed flies disgorging maggots. Miguel heard a girl call excitedly, “There was somebody in that car! He burned up! Hurry up!” There was a solid all of people between Miguel and Tom and what was left of Sandy. Tom was sitting on the wet road, his back against the rear wheel of the car. He was being sick.
Miguel looked around for Allie. She was standing by the open door with her arms around Florian, who was having hysterics.
Miguel shook Tom’s shoulder. “Midge,” he said hoarsely.
Tom gazed blankly at him.
“Midge,” Miguel said again. “I saw the door fly open. Something fell out. I think it was Midge.”
Someone yelled, “Come on! It just happened!” Miguel saw men running toward the still-burning car.
“Tom,” he said. “Get up. We have to find Midge.” His voice sounded gravelly, as though he had been screaming for hours.
Tom lurched to his feet and followed him around the car. They began to search the deep grass along the side of the road. More cars were stacking up, more people were appearing with that awful blood-hunger on their faces.
Miguel began to call. His throat was so raw it hurt to breathe. “Midge!”
A man in a sweat shirt shoved him out of the way and said, “Watch where you’re going, buddy.”
Miguel heard a sound like a kitten mewing. It was a thin, hurt sound. Midge lay in the grass twenty feet from the road. Her cheeks were in ribbons.
“God,” Tom whispered. “She must have landed on the road with her face.”
Miguel cradled her head in his lap and started calling for a doctor. People rushed by, unheeding. Allie came pushing ‘ through the crowd and found them in the dark, huddled in the wet grass. Miguel was screaming curses at the people running past.
Everything began to run together for Miguel. It was like a dark water color held under a faucet. He remembered Tom running off toward the keening sound of the siren, and he remembered Allie sitting in the grass next to him, holding on to him and crying softly. There was the bubbling sound of Midge’s hurt breathing and the smell of burned meat in the air.
He remembered answering endless questions for a highway patrolman who wanted to give him a citation for driving at night with a restricted drivers license. It seemed absurd and unimportant, somehow. There was a nerve-shattering drive to the hospital behind the agonizingly slow ambulance, and a long wait in the astringent-smelling cement-floored waiting room of the emergency ward and then a doctor telling them that Midge’s cheekbones were fractured, and her jaw, too, and her teeth were smashed and imbedded in her palate. And another doctor telling them Sandy was dead, that he had died not on the highway, but in the ambulance.
The hospital tried to notify Sandy’s parents, but no one was at home. Mrs. Kimball appeared
with her dazed-looking husband and they disappeared into Midge’s room without talking to anyone but the doctors.
Florian was still whimpering and pleading with Tom to take her home. And Allie sitting very still with her hand, icy cold, in Miguel’s.
At ten-thirty, Tom said, “Let’s take Floss home. We can’t do anything here.”
They drove to Florian’s house in a thick silence. Tom didn’t linger at the door. He climbed into the front seat with Miguel and Allie. Miguel turned up Seale to Alma Street and started back toward Los Altos.
“God,” Tom said hollowly. “It happened so quick. I didn’t know it could happen so quick.”
Miguel couldn’t talk. He drove slowly along Alma, where the road ran straight through open fields with the Southern Pacific tracks alongside. He could hear the wheels hissing on the wet pavement. He could hear the motor running. In the far-off distance he could hear a train whistle, mournful in the night. All things Sandy would never hear again. There was no one called Sandy Johnson any more. He was gone. Erased. Miguel felt chilled.
“What’s his mother going to say?” Tom asked. “Jesus, what are we going to tell her?” He seemed unable to cease his monologue. He seemed to need to talk even though neither Allie nor
Miguel answered him. “Old Sand. God, Spick, remember the times we all had at the river? The way old Sandy always had to borrow dough? Why did it have to happen to old Sand?” He covered his face with his hands again and cried softly. It didn’t seem wrong, somehow, for Tom to cry for Sandy. Miguel wished he could cry, too.
They drove quietly in the Wylies’ driveway. There were no lights on in the house except the nightlamp in Allie’s room and the porch light.
“Are you going to wake them up and tell them, Allie?” Tom asked.
Allie shook her head.
“Time enough in the morning,” Miguel said. “Everyone will know then.” In the morning he would go to Raoul and tell him the whole story and Raoul would tell him what, if anything, needed to be done. But tonight, right now, he just wanted to be alone with Allie. He didn’t want to leave her.
Tom stood on the lawn disconsolately and said, “I’ll see you at school tomorrow, then, Spick.”
Miguel walked to his car with him. Tom took hold of his shoulders and said huskily, “I’m glad it wasn’t you, Mike.”
Miguel’s eyes felt hot and wet. He squeezed Tom’s arm and walked away quickly.
Tom let Horace Greeley roll down the drive and out onto the road before he started the engine so that the noise wouldn’t wake Mr. and Mrs. Wylie. Miguel and Allie heard the Ford start up softly and rumble away down the canyon.
Miguel looked up and said, “The stars are out. It’s stopped raining.”
Allie’s voice was low and tremulous. “Don’t go yet,” she said.
“All right.”
He put his arm around her waist and they walked back to the porch. Around the side of the house they found the big wicker davenport. It creaked softly under their weight.
“You know what Tom said to me?” Miguel asked quietly.
“Yes. I heard him.”
Miguel lay back and closed his eyes. His muscles were twitching with fatigue. He drew Allie to him so that her head rested on his shoulder.
“But it could have been you,” Allie said. “It could have been you and me instead of Sandy and Midge.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to wake your folks?”
“Oh, no—no—”
Miguel’s hand found her cheek and stroked it. He was thinking of the way Midge had looked and the things the doctor said about her being disfigured. He suddenly felt that he wanted to shield Allie from everything, he wished he could put himself between her and everything that could ever threaten her. There was a thickness in his throat and his hand trembled.
“It could have been us,” Allie said again. “Oh, dear God—“ Miguel held her tighter against him. His hand was at her throat, his fingertips touching the deep cleft between her breasts. He slipped his hand inside her dress and cradled her bosom. He could hear the water dripping from the eaves of the house into the soft earth of the flower beds.
“Allie, I love you so much.”
She touched his face, exploring it with her hand in the darkness. “Will it be like this always?”
“To the end of my life, Allie.”
“Don’t say that—”
“Allie, Allie, it wasn’t us. It didn’t happen to us.”
“But it could, Mike. It could. It frightens me so to think of losing you. It would be like losing a part of myself—I’d want to die too.”
Miguel could feel his pulse, heavy and fast, in his temples. He couldn’t stop thinking of that burning, screaming manikin. It was as though his own flesh were being seared. He twisted around so that Allie’s face looked up at him, cool and white in the dark. His arms went around her demandingly and his lips pressed on hers. When he stopped kissing her, he heard her say, “Don’t stop. Don’t stop—I don’t want you to stop.”
“Allie, I haven’t anything—”
“I don’t care.” Her voice in his ear was warm and husky with tenderness.
“Your mother and dad—”
“They’re asleep. They won’t hear.”
The satin smoothness of her skin—the intimate courage of her searching hands. It will last forever, Miguel thought, lost in wonder.
On the weekend of the Hearst Regatta that year, Raoul gave a yachting party on the Nereid.
Miguel and Tom had been planning to drive to Tahoe to see Allie and Florian—the whole crowd, Billy Alberg, Guth Guthrie, everyone from Roslyn, was going up to raise cain at Cal-Neva, but Raoul had insisted that Miguel stay in the Bay area and come along on the Nereid and so Miguel had to change his plans and Tom decided to stay with him.
“I’ll drag along and pull my old man and old lady out of the drink when they get a skinful of your dad’s Scotch,” he said with extravagant casualness. “I can see Floss the Hoss any time.”
Tom’s prediction had erred only in detail. By four-thirty, with the sun sinking behind the Golden Gate and the water ruffled into a sharp chop by the evening onshore wind, Tom and Miguel and Morgan, the crewman, were the only sober souls on board.
The Eubankses, the Guthries, Becky and Luis, Raoul, and Billie Stapp—a large, strident and full-bodied blonde who had recently shed her husband in Reno—were all jammed into the tiny, teak-paneled salon under the foredeck, trying to dance on the small, pitching floor.
Mrs. Stapp had fallen into the water earlier in the day as the Nereid cruised off Belvedere Island, and Tom had had to swim out after her to prevent her striking out for the distant shore in a mood of drunken gaiety. She had peeled off—and lost—her dress while thrashing about in the bay, and Raoul had dragged her aboard over the fantail in her slip and panties, her nipples showing through the wet transparency of the silk and the dark triangle of her pubis proclaiming for all to see that she was no natural blonde.
Becky had sulked for an hour about Billie Stapp, sitting alone in the bow with a very tall highball and threatening to climb into the trailing dinghy if Luis came near her. However, since it was very nearly impossible to maintain aloofness for very long on a fifty-foot cruiser carrying ten people, Becky had been drawn back into the vortex of the party when her highball was gone.
Music blared from the phonograph in the salon. Whoooooo stole my heart awaaaay, whoooooo makes me dream all daaay—Becky’s records. She and Raoul both liked what she called “oldies.”
The dancers laughed and shouted, swaying and sweating in the small enclosure. Luis was presiding at the bar, mixing drinks with an intoxicated lack of precision always erring on the side of generosity.
Oliver Eubanks was doing a Bunny Hug with Becky. His face was red and moist. He was saying something about a leave in Paris with buddies from the old 194th Aero.
Tom, sitting next to Miguel in the bridge, overheard his father and said sarcastically, “Get a load of Lincoln Beechy in ther
e. You’d think he invented the airplane.”
The course was set for the lee side of Yerba Buena Island, where the Bay Bridge’s cantilever span arched down toward the tidelands of the east bay. Around the tip of the island could be seen the barges and pile drivers that were working night and day to complete the fill job of creating an artificial peninsula for the World’s Fair that was to open next year.
Miguel sat in the navigators chair, idly playing with the dial of the ship-to-shore radio. He wore his yachting cap pushed back on his head and his eyes were narrowed against the western light of the sunset.
Miguel was conscious these days of changes in himself. He felt that Allie had been largely responsible. He wasn’t an innocent any more. He and Allie had left that stage behind. He guessed what they were doing was wrong. But it didn’t seem wrong. It gave him the feeling that no matter where Allie might be, apart from him, they were linked together. He thought of her now. She would probably be sitting on the boat landing of the Wylies’ place at Tahoe with Florian and maybe some of the fellows from Roslyn. He didn’t feel jealous. Allie was his. He had established possession and it didn’t matter what the wolves tried. It wouldn’t get them anything.
Miguel gazed through the raked windscreen of the bridge at the sun that was settling, like an oblated blood orange, behind the bulge of the sea beyond the Golden Gate. He could see his own reflection in the glass darkly. He was growing thinner and more angular. The almost oriental slant of his eyes seemed more pronounced. Allie said she liked his eyes. She said, too, that he was growing to look like his father, and while this pleased him, it also piqued his sense of individuality. He would rather not look like anyone but himself.
Becky had changed the record. Now it was something more contemporary and sensually slow. You’d be so easy to love—
“Mush,” Tom said. “Let’s go out on deck.”
“Watch it out there,” Morgan cautioned. “It might get a little rough when we come about again.”
Tom and Miguel went out onto the foredeck. The cruiser was moving smartly through the choppy waves and spray tingled on their faces. Tom leaned against a stanchion and said, “That old Stapp babe is a kick.”
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