Dead calm

by Charles Williams

  “Wait a minute!” Mrs. Warriner interrupted. “You still don’t know the whole story. Why do you think we were both in that one cabin when you found us? Hughie hit Bellew and locked us in there because when he came below he found this vermin —this incredible, filthy, loathsome pig—already there trying to get into bed with me. What was he supposed to think? If he’d had any doubts before, that would settle them. I hadn’t made any noise; being raped was preferable to having Hughie come running down there and probably be beaten to death.”

  Ingram looked at Bellew, trying to keep the contempt from showing any more than necessary. Don’t push him, he thought; he’s pretty close to the edge. But the latter was completely at ease. “Rape! Geez! So maybe I was trying to collect what you owed me; it had nothing to do with it, anyway. Hughie-boy already had his club with him when he came down there. He brought it from deck, because he’d already sighted this boat over here.”

  The son of a bitch, Ingram thought. The dirty, sad—

  “If you were that broken up over your wife’s death,” Rae asked, “how did you ever happen to notice she was missing?”

  Ingram gripped her arm and shook his head at her, but neither of the others had heard her anyway.

  At least he knew now why Mrs. Warriner insisted on assuming all the guilt, even if she was probably still wrong. “Listen,” he said, “that doesn’t change anything. He locked you in there because he was already irrational, and he was irrational simply because his mind refused to accept the fact he’d been responsible for Mrs. Bellew’s death.” Then he wondered if he was being very smart. This would only inflame Bellew even more. No, Bellew already knew it anyway, and if he was brutal and stupid enough to want to smash up a boy who was mentally sick, this was merely superfluous and would have no effect on him one way or the other. And somehow he had to reach Mrs. Warriner.

  Even while he was conscious of a faint self-disgust for beginning to sound like a cocktail-party psychiatrist, he couldn’t escape the feeling that her illogical burden of guilt was probably as dangerous here as Bellew’s vindictiveness, and just as likely to trigger an explosion. And certainly it made it a lot more dangerous, and unnecessarily dangerous, for her. Not having any interest at all in what happened to her if anything happened to Warriner, she’d attack Bellew with anything in sight, and the consequences of that wouldn’t be anything you’d ever want to remember—if you lived long enough to remember anything. Then, just for a moment, he was tempted to throw up his hands and let the three of them go ahead and kill themselves. Why did he have to defend Warriner, who’d caused the whole thing, when obviously his responsibility was to Rae? Was he going to endanger her life again for that alibi-artist, merely because he was helpless? But he knew he couldn’t turn his back on it, even aside from the fact that once it started it couldn’t be contained or avoided anyway. And, in the end, there was always Mrs. Warriner. She was worth fifty of the other two, and you couldn’t let her throw herself into the meat-grinder from some misguided feeling of guilt.

  “For God’s sake,” he went on wearily, “none of it was your fault, and you’re not even doing him any good by trying to take the blame. I’m no head-shrinker, but it seems to me the chances are very good he can be brought out of it, with proper treatment. But he has to admit it. I don’t think it’s a feeling of guilt that made him crack up, but just the refusal to accept the blame. And as long as you go on grabbing all of it in sight, he never will. Jesus, there’s no crime in losing your head. Anybody can do it; it’s unpredictable. You know that yourself, Bellew—”

  “No, I don’t, good-buddy. I say nobody but a limp-wristed punk like Hughie-boy could do it, but then I’d never argue with a smart bastard like you. Why don’t you write a book?”

  He bit down hard on his temper. The whole attempt to appeal to the man had been futile, and any minute it was going to get out of hand. He had to move Warriner, and he’d better do it now, before he waked up. If he could get him shut up in that forward cabin, out of sight, they might make it through the night without an eruption of violence, and by morning Bellew would have had a chance to think twice about it. But getting him out from behind the wheel and down the ladder wasn’t going to be easy. He was on the point of telling Bellew to give him a hand when he remembered the old axiom: never give an order you know is going to be ignored.

  He turned to Mrs. Warriner. “I think the best place for him is in the forward cabin. The rest of us can use the two bunks in the main cabin in relays, or flake out on deck, subject to the watches we work out. So if you’ll take his feet, we’ll move him down there now.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said. She stood up.

  “No,” Bellew said. “As you were.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Goldilocks stays right where he is.” Bellew reached out a foot, put it against her midriff, and pushed. She sat down again.

  There was no point in even saying anything, Ingram thought coldly. The act was deliberate and self-explanatory. He was already on his feet, and he hit Bellew as hard as he could just under the ear, as he was getting to his. The only chance he had was to hurt him, and hurt him badly, right at the start. But even as the blow landed, he knew he’d lost. Bellew rolled back with it with the ease and the beautiful reflexes of a pro and counterpunched with almost unbelievable speed for a man his size. Ingram felt the wind go out of him as a fist like a concrete block slammed into his stomach; and then another, which he only partially blocked, hit him over the heart. He started to fall but came back against the mizzen. Bellew hit him twice more in the stomach. Sickness ballooned inside him. He heard Rae shriek behind him, and Mrs. Warriner was trying to get past him to reach Bellew herself.

  It was no place to fight; there was no room. He pushed off the mast, blocked Bellew’s next punch, and managed to get under his guard with a right. Saracen rolled down to starboard. Bellew straightened, off balance, and Ingram hit him again. Bellew went back across the cockpit seat. Ingram swung again, lost his balance, and came down on top of him. They were in the after end of the cockpit, against the binnacle, and Ingram landed with his right forearm across the side of Warriner’s face. Warriner stirred and groaned.

  Ingram felt an arm lock around his neck and the thumb of the other hand groping for his eyes. He ducked his face down in Bellew’s throat and brought his right hand up, grinding the heel of it as he pushed upward, and felt the nose flatten with the tearing of cartilage. Bellew released his neck, pushed him upward, and then kicked out with both feet against his chest. He came up and back, felt his head strike the mizzen boom, and sagged to his knees. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Rae emerging from the hatch with the shotgun barrels in her hand, raising them to swing.

  Bellew whirled as lightly as a cat, caught her arm, and yanked. She came catapulting up on deck. Bellew plucked the gun barrels from her, threw them outward into the sea, and cuffed her backward across the deckhouse in three smooth and almost simultaneous blurs of motion. Ingram was on his feet again. Bellew turned back to him, grinning and hideous with blood running down his face and onto his chest from the pulpy ruin of his nose. Ingram tried to swing, and then something like the popping of a flash bulb went off inside his head and he was on the bottom of the cockpit.

  He wasn’t completely out, but dazed and too sick and too weak to get up. He tried. He pushed upward with his arms, felt Saracen roll all the way over and spin end-for-end, and collapsed again. He was under the edge of the wheel, and inches in front of his face two feet in white canvas shoes were bound to the bottom of the binnacle with a section of old heaving line. He was absorbing and cataloguing this phenomenon with the bemused wonder of a baby discovering its navel, and only beginning to fit it back into its position in a framework of time and place where everything had blown up and hadn’t yet finished settling, when somewhere far off he heard the scream begin. Then the feet moved upward—quite casually, it seemed to him—and the heaving line parted as if it were rotten string.

  His mind was cle
ar now, but he still couldn’t get up. He fell back on his side and was looking up past the wheel and the binnacle. Bellew, the gory face split in its wolfish grin, was leaning over Warriner. And Warriner was sitting up, cringing backward, still screaming.

  “No, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, no! No—no—!”

  Ingram vomited. He could feel the warmth of it on his hands, and the deck was slick with it as he tried again to push himself up. Mrs. Warriner materialized out of somewhere, flinging herself across his line of vision onto Bellew’s shoulders. Bellew shrugged her off. Only half turning, he slapped her backward, and she fell on Ingram’s legs.

  “Come on, old Hughie-boy, old shark-killer.’’ Bellew grabbed Warriner’s shoulders and lifted. He was apparently still talking, for Ingram could see his lips move, but all sound was lost then in another cry from Warriner, a mindless, unceasing, animal screaming that lifted the hair on Ingram’s scalp and ran like ice along his back. Warriner lunged upward from behind the wheel, his legs kicking free of the remaining turns of line around them. The line from his wrists to the stanchion gave way. Muscles writhed in his arms. His hands burst apart.

  Bellew shifted his grip, caught him about the waist, and lifted. He stepped up on the narrow strip of deck between the cockpit and the rail.

  Mrs. Warriner was off Ingram’s legs then, springing up and toward Bellew. Ingram made it to his knees. Warriner’s cry cut off as he saw the water below him, and he spun around in Bellew’s grasp, locking his arms and legs around him as if he were clinging to the bole of a tree, and nothing was visible of his eyes except the whites. Ingram got to his feet but fell backward onto the seat. Saracen rolled down to starboard. Bellew and Warriner began to topple outward. They were already over the lifeline and almost horizontal when Mrs. Warriner leaped out onto Bellew’s back and clamped one arm around his neck while she beat at him with the other hand. All three of them, in one welded and inseparable unit, wheeled slowly over and fell into the sea.

  17

  “Flashlight!” he shouted to Rae, who was getting up now. He pushed himself off the cockpit seat and raised it to grope in the locker under it for a diving mask. Leaping to the rail, he looked down. None of them had come up. Bellew, even his tremendous strength powerless in Warriner’s cataleptic embrace, couldn’t break free, and Mrs. Warriner wouldn’t. She’d still be trying to separate them when she lost consciousness. Yanking the mask down over his face, he fell backward into the water.

  He turned and peered downward but could see nothing. Farther out, the water was faintly illuminated from the spreader lights, but here directly under the side it was in deep shadow and it was impossible to see under the boat at all. He had only a minute or two at the most. Saracen was swinging around on the swell, and by the time he could dive twice there’d be no way of telling where they’d gone under. He kicked downward, swinging his arms in all directions, groping for them. He felt nothing.

  Conscious of Saracen’s deadly mass plunging up and down on the swell within feet of him, he felt a moment’s panic. If he lost his bearings and came up under her he could be knocked unconscious. He swam to his right and started up, and at the same instant he heard them. They were under her, bumping and kicking against the hull in their struggle. Then a beam of light penetrated the water just in front of his face. His head came out of the water. Rae was leaning over the side with a flashlight, shining it downward.

  “They’re underneath.” He gasped. “Shine it in under the counter.”

  She ran back and threw herself flat on deck aft of the cockpit. Reaching an arm over, she threw the beam of light down and forward, past the rudder. He went under again. He was below the turn of the bilge now and could see the light angling down astern, but everything forward of it was in impenetrable shadow. Saracen plunged up and then down, rolling to starboard, toward him. He put a hand up and felt the planking, slick with marine growth, come lunging down against it. He shot downward. It stopped. Pain bit into his palm where it had been cut by a barnacle. As Saracen went back to port he swam down and in, raking the area with his arms. Then he saw Warriner and Bellew.

  They were almost straight below him, falling away now and dropping into the beam of light. They were still locked together, but no arms or legs moved, and something like a plume of dark smoke was drifting upward and diffusing in the water above them. It was blood, either from Bellew’s broken nose or from some wound inflicted on one of them by the keel or hull. He kicked downward but knew at the same time it was impossible. He was already running out of breath, and they were nearly fifteen feet below him, still drifting down. But Mrs. Warriner must be still above them. He had to find her. Then his hand brushed something just below him, something soft and fern-like. It was her hair. He entwined his fingers in it and began swimming up and out, away from the hull above him. His chest hurt now, and he wondered if he would make it. He’d been a fool to come under here; his first responsibility was to Rae. Just before he blacked out, his head broke surface and he gulped hungrily at the air.

  He was almost under the counter, still too near the rudder and propeller. He swam out, trying to get Mrs. Warriner’s head above the surface. Rae had seen him now. “Others—too far down—no use—” He gasped. “Ladder—” It would take too long to tow her around to the other side. Rae disappeared above him, and almost immediately the ladder was dropped over the starboard side, just forward of him. He swam up to it, towing the inert figure behind him. With the beating he had taken from Bellew, he was very weak now, and he wondered if he could get her aboard. Time was precious. She’d been unconscious for minutes.

  He ducked under the surface and pulled her across his shoulder. When Saracen rolled down to starboard, he got one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, caught a lifeline stanchion with his free hand, and heaved upward, with Rae helping from above to haul her in under the lifeline until her body was on deck. He came on up himself. They lifted her down onto one of the cockpit seats. Her hair was plastered to her face and she was bleeding from a half-dozen barnacle cuts on her bare legs and shoulders, but she appeared to be uninjured otherwise.

  He turned her face downward and began applying artificial respiration. Water ran out of her mouth and drained from her hair, but there was no movement. A minute went by. Two. Three. He was on the point of turning her on her back to try the mouth-to-mouth method he’d read of when he felt her begin trying to breathe again.

  She retched and began to gag from the salt water she’d swallowed. He stepped back. She was breathing regularly and without difficulty now. In a few more minutes she opened her eyes. She looked around, blankly at first, and then she screamed. She came off the seat, trying to get to her feet to lunge toward the rail where they’d all gone over. He’d been expecting it. He caught her and forced her back. She fought him, still screaming. Then just as abruptly all the strength went out of her again and she collapsed. She lay face downward while her whole body shook with sobs.

  Rae had disappeared. She came running up the ladder now, carrying a glass. Between them they got her upright and forced her to drink. They eased her gently back on the cushion. In a few minutes the crying ceased and she lay still.

  “What was it?” he asked.

  “Codeine tablet,” Rae said. She fumbled a cigarette out of her pocket, but it fell from her fingers into the bottom of the cockpit. She made as if to reach down for it, then merely sighed and collapsed on the other seat. Ingram bent and picked it up for her, but with his wet hand and the water pouring off him and down his arm it was mush by the time he’d straightened. He tossed it overboard. Saracen rolled. They looked at each other in silence.

  Then Ingram’s face twisted. “Maybe if I hadn’t hit him …”

  She looked up. Her voice was thin and very near the edge as she said, “Stop it! And never say that again. He was going to do it, no matter what you did, and you know it. And you saved her, didn’t you?”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  She rubbed a hand across her face. Then she brought the
hand down and looked at its trembling. She clenched it into a fist and opened it. “With luck,” she said, “maybe I can keep from thinking about it for ten minutes, and keep from hearing—from hearing—” She swallowed, and went on. “That should be—just about long enough—to get her into that forward bunk and into dry pajamas and wrap a towel around her hair. And then take one of those codeine things myself. Because if I don’t make it, you’re going to be picking up springs and cogwheels the rest of the night. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Ingram awoke just at dawn. He ached all over, and his stomach muscles felt as if he’d been run over by a truck. He turned his head in the beginnings of light inside the cabin and looked at Rae asleep in the opposite bunk. She was wearing the same sleeveless short pajamas she’d had on yesterday morning, and the mop of tawny hair was spread across the pillow, encircled by her arms. The only thing different was the discolored and swollen area on her face where Warriner had hit her. Just beyond his feet the tea kettle slid and bumped gently against the rails that kept it on the galley stove. Dishes shifted minutely in their stowage above the sink. A timber creaked. It was hot. And it was still dead calm.

  He rolled out of the bunk and donned khaki shorts, remembering he could no longer run about the boat naked or clad only in a towel. His eyes softened as he looked down at Rae, and as he put on water for coffee he was careful to make no sound. He went up on deck. It could be yesterday morning all over again, he thought; everything topside was wet with dew, and the surface of the Pacific was as slick as oil except for the heaving of the swell. It was full daylight now, and the few clouds overhead were already edged with pink. Wind or no wind, it was morning, it was beautiful, and it was good to be alive. Then suddenly he was thinking of Warriner and Bellew somewhere in the eternal darkness and the ooze two miles below, and he swore softly as he tried to wrench his mind away. He knew that for years it would keep coming back, leaping out at him in odd moments and without warning to hit him with that unanswerable question: Would something different, some other way, have worked?