Windchill Summer

by Norris Church Mailer

  “Down there.” I pointed.

  She took her flashlight and didn’t even hesitate; she crawled right down to him. Ricky Don took off a pack and set up a lantern. It was almost as bright as sunlight to my eyes.

  “How did you find us? Where’s Bean?”

  “I thought Bean was down here with you,” Baby said. “He never came out after y’all left me up there. I finally went and called Ricky Don, and he came driving up here with Faye in the front seat beside him.”

  “How’d she wind up with you, Ricky Don?”

  “She flew into Little Rock this morning, rented a car, and come into the office looking for Barlow. I took her over to his house, but he wasn’t there, so I called up at Bean’s, and his mama said Barlow was up here and so were you and Baby. We had done started up the mountain when the call from Baby came in on the radio.”

  Faye and Tripp were talking, but as hard as I strained, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. His voice was faint, but at least he was conscious.

  “It was a good thing she was with Ricky Don, Cherry. She used to play in the tunnels in Vietnam they dug during the war with the French when she was a kid, and wasn’t at all scared of this cave. Ricky Don couldn’t get through the crack, but Faye did, easy, and she found a bigger opening. We’ve been looking for you for the last hour. Finally, we heard you screaming.”

  “I’m grateful to her, then. But we need to get Tripp out of there. His leg is hurt bad.”

  —

  It took a long time to get Tripp out. Ricky Don could just about get down to where he was trapped, and went to work chiseling a piece of rock off to get his leg out. He couldn’t do it for long, though, in that cramped space, so we all took turns crawling down and hammering on the rock, even Baby. Funny how you get used to things. The second or third time she went in, it didn’t bother her at all. Finally, the rock broke, and we got the leg free. When we tried to move him, Tripp passed out, and that was for the better. His leg was bloody, and it stuck out at an odd angle. Faye rigged up a splint and we wrapped him in one of Bean’s old quilts and carried him out as gently as we could. In some places, we had to lay him on the ground and drag him. He kept waking up and moaning and taking on something awful until he finally passed out for good. I don’t know who was more upset, Faye or me. It was weird. We didn’t say anything to each other, but she didn’t act like a woman who wasn’t in love with him. There would be time enough later for us to talk, but we definitely needed to.

  We put Tripp in the backseat of Ricky Don’s cruiser, and Faye plopped herself down next to him and put his head on her lap. I had to get in the front with Ricky Don, and Baby followed us in my VW. Bean had still not come back when we got to the house. I hadn’t said anything to them about Bean killing Carlene. There didn’t seem to be a good moment. But then there probably wouldn’t ever be a good moment to tell Baby. I couldn’t imagine what she would say or do. I sure dreaded it. If he really had killed Carlene, he might be halfway to California by now, but I couldn’t do anything about it. The important thing was to get Tripp to the hospital.

  Ricky Don pulled out onto the road and got on the radio to let the hospital know we were coming. Then he flipped the red lights on, and we raced on down the mountain with the siren blasting. As we passed the red airplane lights, I glanced out across the valley and it looked like there was a big fire down there. I guessed we’d find out what it was later. For now, all I could worry about was Tripp.

  71.Cherry

  We got Tripp into the emergency room, and all of us went out to the waiting room while they cleaned and X-rayed his leg. It turned out to be a compound fracture, which we knew already, and they prepped him for surgery.

  Faye took right over, talking to the doctor in nurse language and filling out the papers, telling everyone she was the wife. I went and called Mama and Daddy and told them I was all right. They wanted to come out, but I said I would be home to tell them the whole story later. I can tell you, I wasn’t looking forward to it any more than I was to telling Baby about Bean.

  They finally let me in to see Tripp just before they took him to the operating room. He had already been given a shot, and was pretty groggy.

  “Hey, Tripp. It’s me, Cherry. You’re going to be all right. You’ll have to wear a cast for a little while, but you’ll be good as new in no time. How do you feel?”

  “Fine. Good stuff in that shot. Primo. This is peanuts compared to a punji trap.” He smiled a goofy smile at me and reached for my hand. “You look so cute. I never even noticed you had a haircut. You look like a cute little fuzzy little wuzzy little lamb.” He was beginning to slur.

  “Little lamb? You’re really out of it, aren’t you?” The nurse stuck her head in and said I only had a couple more minutes before I’d have to leave.

  “I’ll go on now and let you get your operation, Tripp, but I’ll be right outside. I won’t leave you. We’ll all be outside.”

  “Faye too?”

  “Faye too.”

  “That’s nice.”

  I got a little pain in my heart when he said that. He drifted off to sleep, and the nurse came in to take him to surgery.

  —

  Baby said they’d be down in the coffee shop, so I went to look for her and Ricky Don. They weren’t there, but Faye was. She stood up, and I realized she came up to my armpit. It was the first time I had really taken a good look at her. She was about the same size as Baby, but more delicate—like a cat. Her eyes were wide set and slanted up at the corners like a cat’s, too. She was wearing a midriff-baring top and the lowest pair of hip-hugger pants I ever saw. I don’t know how she kept them up without her crack showing. I guess it was warmer in California than it was here. She had black shoulder-length hair and long fingernails, painted silver.

  “Well. How are you doing, Faye?” I had no idea what to say to her. I wondered where Ricky Don and Baby were. They must have set this up, the rats.

  “I’m fine. Would you like some coffee?” She spoke really good English, with a cute accent.

  “Sure.” I went to the machine, put my dime in, and pressed LIGHT. I suspected that the milk they put in wasn’t real, but it was the only thing you could get here.

  “You are beautiful,” she said.

  “So are you.” She was. It was hard not to be jealous, even though Tripp said he was divorcing her. She had a thick gold band on her wedding-ring finger.

  “Well, it has been some day. I want to thank you for what you did for Tripp and me. I am grateful you were there to help us.”

  “Of course I would help Tripp, and also you. He is my husband. Did you know that?”

  “I know that. He’s a friend of mine.”

  “You don’t have to pretend, Cherry. I know he has been seeing you. He told me when I was with him a little while ago.”

  “Oh. What did he say?”

  “He told me he was in love with you.”

  “Oh.” So, even out of it on painkillers, he had told her he loved me. Maybe he really did. I kind of felt sorry for her.

  “Are you in love with him?”

  “Well, Faye . . . this is sort of awkward. I mean, I just met you and all. In fact, I only found out about you yesterday. If I had known all this time that Tripp was married, I would never . . .”

  “I am going to fight for him. He thought he married Vietnam and I married America. That is why he ran away—he was running from Vietnam. But he was wrong. I am more than Vietnam. I am a woman. I understand him, and I love him.”

  “You’re going to fight . . . what do you mean?”

  “I am not going to pull your hair, if that is what you are afraid of. But I will not go away and leave him here for you, either.”

  “I think Tripp will have some say in that decision, don’t you? But I guess he’s worth fighting for, all right. You do what you think you have to do, and I will too. I have to go now.”

  This was awful. I thought she didn’t love him, and there would be no problem with us being together. I tho
ught she had just married him to get to the States. It was so much easier when I didn’t have to look a flesh-and-blood wife but could just think of her as a problem to get past. After us going through what we had in the cave, I thought he had been completely truthful with me. Now I didn’t know again.

  —

  I went back to the waiting room and found Baby and Ricky Don. They turned, as one, and looked at me.

  “Thanks, guys, for warning me about Faye. I really appreciate it.”

  “We thought it would be better if you talked to her alone. Are you mad at us?”

  “No. I don’t know who to be mad at, you or her or Bean or Tripp or myself.” I started to cry, just a little. The day had been kind of a strain, to say the least. Baby scooted over to make room for me on the couch, and I sat down next to her. She put her arm around me, pulled my head down on her shoulder and let me cry. Ricky Don went outside. I don’t know what he thought, and I really didn’t care.

  “Cherry, what do you think happened to Bean? I’m not worried about him being lost, but it is really weird that he never came back. Do you think he’s all right?”

  I had to stop feeling sorry for myself when she was going through just as much as I was.

  “Oh, Baby. I’ve been so worried about Tripp and all that I just couldn’t say anything.”

  “Say about what? Do you know something about Bean?”

  “Baby . . . don’t go crazy on me here, but Tripp thinks Bean might have killed Carlene.” I just blurted it out. There was no soft way to say it.

  Her eyes bugged out, and her mouth tried to make a sound, but nothing came out.

  “You know he hasn’t exactly been his old self since he came home. You said it enough times. Right?”

  “Right. But that doesn’t mean . . . what did Tripp say?”

  “The night it happened, Tripp gave Bean some LSD, and he thinks it kicked something loose in Bean’s brain.”

  Baby wouldn’t look me in the face. She started to shred a Kleenex, making a little pile on the arm of the chair.

  “That still doesn’t mean he would kill Carlene. He liked her.”

  “He didn’t know it was Carlene. He thought she was some girl back in Vietnam, somebody he had already killed.”

  “Did he say her name?”

  “He did, but I don’t really remember it. Noy Ann, or something like that.”

  Baby listened, but she kept looking down at her lap. She started in on a second Kleenex. I got really uncomfortable.

  “I didn’t say I thought it was so, Baby, just that Tripp did.”

  “Well. I don’t know. I do know he knew somebody named Nguyen.” She kept looking at her lap, like she didn’t want to meet my eyes.

  “Baby—do you think it is possible?”

  She carefully picked up all the pieces of the Kleenex and wadded them into a ball, then threw it toward the wastebasket. It missed.

  “He’s not the same guy he was, Cherry. Ever since Carlene was murdered, I have been more scared of him than I let on. Now that you told me what you did, I think it might possibly be true, but I didn’t want to see it before. Little things he did and said are starting to add up, though.”

  “Do you think we ought to tell Ricky Don?”

  “I think we have to.”

  We grabbed each other and held on. Now both of us were crying.

  —

  Ricky Don came in with some sandwiches for us and, finally, I had to tell him what Tripp had said.

  He shook his head. “Let’s don’t jump to conclusions. The first thing we need to do is go back down in there and see if we can find some evidence. I’ll have to get some of the state forensics guys. Then what we have to do is find Bean. No telling where he might be. Y’all be careful. If he gets in touch, don’t let on that you know anything. See if you can get him to come here to the hospital.”

  “If he did do it, Ricky Don, it wasn’t really Bean,” Baby said. “It was something that the war made out of him. We think that the war is happening halfway around the world, but it’s not. It’s digging its claws into the boys and they are bringing it home with them.”

  “You’re right about that, Baby. You sure are right about that. I got to go now. Y’all hang in. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  72. Cherry

  Tripp had been in the operating room over an hour when Baby and I heard noise outside and looked out the window. In the street in front of the hospital, there must have been a thousand or more people walking by holding candles. They were all wearing black armbands. It was the moratorium. I had forgotten all about it. We had been planning it at the university for weeks, but it hadn’t entered my head once all day. All over the country, people were marching tonight to protest the Vietnam War. Our art fraternity, Kappa Pi, had planned to march all together, with most of the other ones. It seemed like such a long time ago that I had sat next to Tripp in drawing class, planning on going to the march, and didn’t have anything on my mind more serious than what I was going to wear. It almost seemed like that was some other girl.

  Baby had been sitting there like a zombie, and nothing I said seemed to get her out of it. She needed to get some air. I took her by the hand and made her get up, and we went outside and stood on the sidewalk watching the marchers. I must have looked awful, with my ragged, dirty clothes and skinned-up knees, but I didn’t even care. I would guess most of the kids from DuVall were out there, and a whole lot of teachers and just plain people, including a lot of older ones. Rainy Day and John Cool went by and waved, and so did Rocky and Denny and J.C. I saw my drawing teacher go by with Father Leo from St. Juniper’s. He was wearing his long black priest robe and a black band around his forehead, carrying a blazing candelabra and smoking a cigar.

  Queen Esther McVay saw us and waved, then came over with some armbands. We all put them on.

  “Where you been, girl? I thought you two were going to march with Kappa Pi.”

  “We were going to, Queen, but something came up. My boyfriend got in an accident and they are operating on his leg right now.”

  “Oh, that’s awful. I hope he’s all right. I’ll say a prayer for him. Here, let me get you a candle.” She yelled to her boyfriend, “Marcus, bring over some of those candles.”

  Marcus was the handsomest black guy I ever saw in my life. He brought over a box of candles, and Baby and I each lit one and held them up as the crowd filed by. Queen Esther and Marcus stayed with us and she started to sing “We Shall Overcome” in her strong alto voice, and we sang with her. The crowd heard us and gradually joined in, and all ever-how-many hundreds of us sang the whole song, right there in front of the hospital. It made chills go up my spine. It was the most moving thing I ever was part of, us singing and all those candle flames flickering, like a thousand fire-flies passing in the night.

  I heard a sweet, small voice behind me. It was Faye, singing right along with us. She knew all the words. I handed her my candle, and the two of us stood side by side and sang until the last notes of the song died away. Then the marchers moved on and we all went back upstairs, Baby, me, and Faye, to wait for Tripp to get out of surgery. I wanted to be mad at Faye, but I couldn’t. She had probably saved my life. That had to have been one of those “God’s plan” moments, because there was no other way she would have turned up in Sweet Valley on the exact same morning that we had gotten trapped in a cave if God hadn’t had a hand in it. I guess He heard me after all.

  I remembered then that I hadn’t even thanked God for saving me, after all that heavy praying and promises I had made Him. I guess I was no better than anybody else who makes promises when they are in trouble, but He probably knew that before He answered my prayers. I thanked Him then and said a prayer for Tripp, and another one for Bean, wherever he was. He would need it.

  73.Bean

  When Bean left Cherry with Tripp, he took a different route out of the cave. He couldn’t believe that Cherry and Baby had picked this morning of all mornings to come up here. He had just come out of
the cave and was on his way to get his truck and take off when he heard them calling. They would have to know that Barlow was with him if they had been to the house and seen his car. Barlow would probably never be able to get out of that hole, and while the idea of him starving down there wasn’t pretty, there was always the chance he would free himself and find a way out. It would take him a good long time, though. Enough time for Bean to get some stuff together and make it to Mexico.

  He didn’t really remember what all he had told Barlow last night, but it was enough to scare him and send him running for the exit. He must have told him about killing the girl. Nguyen. Or maybe he told him it was Carlene. The two of them ran together in his head. Whoever it was, he was sure of one thing—he had killed somebody down by the pool in the flowstone room.

  He couldn’t see why Barlow had been so freaked about him killing the girl gook, though. Barlow had been in some heavy killing, himself, to hear him tell it. It shouldn’t shock him. It was war. You had to kill people in war. That’s what we are over here for. We have to make a high body count so we can win the war. Anyone would tell you that.

  One minute they were having a good time looking at the wonders of his cave, then the next minute he turned around and there was Barlow, running off to tell on him for doing his job. That’s not how a buddy acts. A buddy helps you, watches your back. Barlow wasn’t his friend, so he must be working for the VC. They were the only ones who would be mad if he killed one of them. His commanding officers gave him medals for killing VC. He had a drawer full of them.

  He would have had to stop Barlow from telling, but Barlow had done the job himself by falling into the hole. And it was just Cherry’s bad luck that she happened into the tunnel when she did. They would be down there a good long time before they realized he wasn’t coming back.

  The worst of it was, he had to leave Baby. He would like to take her with him, but she would never go and leave Cherry. Sometimes he thought she liked Cherry more than she liked him. Baby would be all right without him. Even if she tried to get some help, it wouldn’t be for hours. And who was there to help her, anyhow, who knew the caves? Baby would never go down in them. She was even afraid to go into his Indian room at the entrance. Once Cherry was out of the picture, he would send for Baby to come and join him in Mexico. She would love him more when Cherry was no longer around. He would just have to wait until then. But now, he had to figure out how to get out of this tunnel. Sometimes it was so hard to think.