The air was filled with the thunder of racing engines, and Avis Warwick, goggles in place, suddenly turned to Peter and shouted, “Beat them all, Peter! Step on the gas and never let off!”
“Right!” Peter grinned back at her, then gripped the wheel, his knuckles white as he waited for the starter’s gun. As always in a race, his nerves were strung tight, and now he forgot everything except the stretch of track that lay ahead of him.
He had come early, along with Easy, Jolie, and Avis, to study the competition. He and Easy knew which machines were the ones to beat, and the two had carefully planned their strategy.
Jolie was at the track, too. She had said nothing about Avis, merely, “Good luck, Peter.”
“Thanks, Jolie.” He reached out and took her hand. “Don’t worry. The Jolie Blonde will be a winner. Always friends, aren’t we?”
“Yes, always friends.”
Now as Peter sat there, tense as a coiled spring, waiting for the gun, he saw a look in Jolie’s eyes that he could not understand, but there was no time to think of that now. He felt the pressure of Avis’s shoulder against him, and then the crack of the starter’s pistol sounded out over the engines’ roar. He floored the accelerator and felt the Jolie Blonde lunge forward with a surge of power. The air was filled with screaming engines and tires keening against the track, and then all was speed and blur and motion!
Peter never could remember very clearly the first three laps of the race. He remembered only that the Dusenburg kept crowding him against the rail. The driver, a big German with a heavy mustache, was laughing, and Peter knew it was because he had a woman riding in his car. There had been much attention paid to Avis before the race, as all the photographers had crowded around the Jolie Blonde snapping pictures. Now Peter tried to maneuver ahead of the Dusenburg but had trouble getting by. The driver, Max Mueller, grinned in delight as he continued pushing Peter over to the rail.
Anger surged through Peter, and Avis screamed, “Don’t let him get by with that, Peter! Knock him over!”
Peter waited until there was a clear space, then he swung the Jolie Blonde to the right. The front of his car caught the back of Mueller’s Dusenburg and knocked him almost into a spin.
“That’s the way! Give it to him!” Avis screamed. She had pulled her helmet off, and her hair was flying in the wind. Her face was shining with excitement, and Peter knew she did not realize the danger in what they were doing.
Three times they circled the track, and on the next lap, Mueller came up beside them again. His face was scowling now, and suddenly Peter grew wary. He slammed on the brakes to let Mueller pass, but Mueller suddenly swung over and the back of his car snagged the front of the Jolie Blonde.
The wheel was wrenched from Peter’s hands, and although he grabbed for it wildly, the car fishtailed and went out of control.
As the Jolie Blonde went careening down the track, changing and swapping ends, Peter could see nothing as he tried to fight the spin. Then he felt the rear of the car rise up and his heart leaped, for he knew they were going over.
“Avis—” He yelled and reached over to put his arms around her, but even as he did, the car flew up, then came down on its side with a thunderous crash. Peter’s grip was torn loose from Avis, and he felt himself spinning and rolling in the dirt. He heard the crash as the Jolie Blonde smashed into the railing, but he could not see.
When he finally stopped rolling, he felt blood inside of his mouth. The roaring of the cars sounded like thunder, and he staggered to his feet. One car was weaving madly to avoid him and passed by so close he thought he felt it touch his leg. He did not stop though, for his eyes were riveted on Avis Warwick, whose body lay crumpled against the barricade. Staggering forward, he reached her and fell down beside her. He rolled her over and saw that her eyes were closed and she was limp.
“Avis,” he shouted, “are you all right? Can you hear me?” But no answer came. He picked her up and turned, carrying her down the track to where an ambulance he had never thought he would need was waiting.
Peter, Easy, and Jolie sat together in the hospital waiting room. A large clock on the wall ticked off the seconds, and for a long time no one said anything. They had been there now for over an hour, and finally Easy jumped up and growled, “Why don’t they tell us something!”
“Sit down, Easy. They’ll let us know as soon as they can.” Jolie reached up and pulled Easy down. Her own face was pale, and she turned to study Peter, who had not said a word since they had followed the ambulance in. Peter had ridden with Avis in the ambulance, and now his face was pale as wallpaper paste. His lips were drawn so tightly together they seemed bloodless, and his eyes were in a trancelike stare.
Jolie reached over and took his hand. It was limp and he seemed unaware of her touch. He stared down at the floor, his body stiff and unyielding.
Finally a door opened at the end of the hall, and a doctor wearing a white jacket and a stethoscope came out. All three rose as he approached and introduced himself. “I’m Dr. Wardlow. Are you Mrs. Warwick’s family?”
“We’re her friends,” Peter said hoarsely. “How is she, Doctor?”
“What about her family?”
“I don’t . . . think she has any. Not close anyway,” Peter said. He was studying the doctor’s face, trying to find something hopeful, but he saw nothing. The doctor was a short, muscular man with black hair and equally black eyes. Now he looked Peter over, as though to read his thoughts, and said quietly, “It’s not good news.”
“Is she alive?” Jolie whispered.
“Yes, but she’s very badly injured. I’ve been waiting until she woke up. She has a serious concussion, as well as being pretty scratched up and bruised.” He paused, then added, “She also has some kind of injury to her lower body.” He hesitated again, seeming to have difficulty in finding the words. Finally he shrugged and continued. “I’m sorry to tell you, but Mrs. Warwick woke up ten minutes ago, and the truth is, she has no feeling in her lower limbs. She’s paralyzed from the waist down.”
Peter Winslow reared backward and shut his eyes. He said nothing, and Jolie reached out and took his arm to steady him.
“She’ll be all right, though, won’t she, Doctor?” Jolie asked.
Dr. Wardlow shook his head. “I’d like to be more positive, but the truth is, we just don’t know at this point. She may be all right tomorrow. We’re pretty sure her spine’s not broken, so that means it’s nerve damage, and it’s hard to predict just what the end result will be. Whatever the case, she’s very upset. I’ve given her something to quiet her, so she’s gone back to sleep. When she wakes up, though, she’ll be frightened and need someone beside her.”
“I’ll be there,” Peter Winslow said.
Jolie looked up quickly at his face and thought, He feels responsible. He feels guilty about what happened. What this meant she did not know, but she watched as Peter pulled himself from her grasp and walked across the room, following Dr. Wardlow. She knew somehow that life had changed and that Peter Winslow would not be able to shake this thing off. As the door closed, she thought, He’ll never leave her now. Then she turned and walked slowly out of the hospital. Easy followed her, saying nothing, as they stepped out into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Dark Tunnel
A heavy silence hung over the waiting room, thick and oppressive as the fog that sometimes invades the seashore, blanketing everything in a deathly stillness. The waiting room itself was as stark and unadorned as an unimaginative architect could make it. The furniture consisted of worn chairs in a kind of leprous puce color. Their corduroy upholstery had been worn smooth, and from several of the cushions, tufts of cotton peeped out of the various tears and split seams. On the wall hung a large painting of sleek, shining thoroughbreds leaping fences with an exuberance that contrasted bizarrely with the dingy gray paint that peeled off in one corner by the single window. The window was open, and the feeble light of a gibbous moon filtered through it, supplemented
only by a single lamp perched precariously on an end table. The coffee table was off balance and rickety, and the magazines were six months old or older. All of this produced a somber and gloomy atmosphere capable of depressing anyone forced to sit there.
Earlier in the day the room had been crowded with people jockeying for seats, some men smoking incessantly and filling the air with blue, acrid smoke. Now, however, it had only three occupants. Peter Winslow slumped in one of the worn chairs, staring at the painting of horses sailing over fences, but not really seeing it. His auburn hair was mussed from the countless times he had run his hands through it, and his eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. He seemed almost asleep, for his eyes were half closed, almost concealing them. His lips were drawn together into a straight line, then turned down at the edges, and there was a lifelessness about him that was completely out of keeping with his usual cheerfulness.
Easy Devlin sat beside Jolie Devorak at the end of the line of chairs. He was holding a chipped blue coffee mug, which he now lifted to his lips. Sipping its contents, he frowned, then stared into the cup. “If that’s coffee, I wish it was tea—and if it’s tea, I wish it was coffee.” He stuck his finger into the murky liquid, stirred, then examined his fingernail. “It’s a pure wonder it didn’t eat it off. The coffee in Sing Sing was better!” He looked down the row at Peter. “You reckon he’s ever going to say anything, Jolie?”
With a sigh, Jolie shook her head. Fatigue edged her features, and weariness from waiting for hours had brought a slump to her rather square but rounded shoulders. The scar on her left cheek seemed to stand out, for her face was pale. Unthinkingly she shook her head so that her black hair fell forward to cover it. It was a habitual motion, held over from childhood. She spoke softly, her voice barely rising above a whisper. “I don’t know, Easy. It would be better if he would talk, but all he does is sit there and stare at that dumb painting.”
Easy looked over at the painting and shook his head. “That fellow sure don’t know much about horses. Look at the fetlock. It ain’t nothin’ like a real fetlock. If a fella’s goin’ to paint horses, he could paint a fetlock right, don’t ya think?”
Jolie did not even answer. She let the silence fall over the room again, broken only by Easy as he sipped noisily at his cup of coffee. They had all been at the hospital off and on for twenty-four hours without sleep, and now she turned to say, “Easy, why don’t you go home? You can’t do any good here.”
“Neither can you.”
“Well, not for Avis anyway.” Her eyes went back to Peter, and she added, “I’m going to see if I can get him to go home and try to get some rest.”
“Won’t do no good. That feller’s stubborn as a blue-nosed mule, Jolie. You know that.”
Ignoring Easy, Jolie rose and walked toward Peter, her heels making a rhythmic clicking noise on the worn pale gray tiles. She sat down beside Peter, put her hand on his, and said quietly, “Peter, you need to go home and get some sleep. If there’s any change, I’ll come and get you.”
At the sound of her voice, Peter jerked and his eyes flew wide open. The distant look in his eyes revealed to Jolie that his thoughts had been far away, and there was a certain wildness in his expression for a slight moment. Then he shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and released it in a shuddering sigh. “No,” he murmured, “I’ll stay here—but you go on, Jolie. No sense you and Easy losing sleep.”
Without replying to this remark, Jolie sat there, her hand on his. He had, as she had often thought, the hands of an aristocrat, with long, tapering fingers, strong but flexible. She had often thought he might have been a great musician, a pianist perhaps, but now there was a slight tremble in his hands, something she had never seen before.
“She’ll be all right. We can’t give up hope,” Jolie said.
Peter did not answer. He pulled his hand back and ran it through his hair again, ruffling it, and then suddenly rose and walked over to the single window without speaking. He stared out, and finally Jolie went back to her previous seat and said firmly, “Easy, you go on home.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll come along pretty soon.”
“All right. Maybe I can take the day shift.” Easy rose, stretched his back painfully, then tapped the cast on his arm. “If I hadn’t broken this wing, this never would have happened.”
“It might have. You might have been hurt in the accident. Nobody knows about things like that.”
“No, it was just bad luck. I told you, didn’t I, about how a bird got into my room a few days ago?”
“Yes, you told me, Easy. Now go on home.”
“If that bird hadn’t got in, none of this would have happened.” He reached down, pulled his cap over his sandy hair, and left without another word.
Turning, Jolie kept her eyes on Peter, who stood immobile at the window, staring down. She was tired of sitting and rose, arched her back and then walked slowly back and forth to get the blood flowing again. The sound of her heels on the tile marked off the passage of time that seemed to creep rather than flow. Finally she went over to stand beside Peter. If I could just think of something to say to him—something that would help him snap out of it. I’ve never seen him like this. She could not, however, think of anything to say and was startled when Peter turned to her with anguish distorting his expression. His lips were pulled tightly together in a grimace and two lines between his eyebrows were deep furrows of grief. He looked at her, seeming not to recognize her, and once again she knew that his thoughts were in the room with Avis. She reached up and put her hand lightly on his chest and felt the beating of his heart but said nothing.
Looking down at Jolie’s hand, Peter leaned over suddenly and grabbed her shoulders. His grip was so strong that it hurt, but Jolie did not let it show in her face. “It was my fault—all my fault, Jolie!”
“Don’t say that, Peter. She chose to go of her own free will.”
“I . . . I should have stopped her.”
Knowing that it would make no difference whatsoever, Jolie said, “It wasn’t your fault. These things happen. Everyone who gets in a car and races knows something like this may happen. It could have been you, Peter.”
Suddenly Peter’s eyes closed and his cheek began to quiver. Jolie saw with astonishment that he was breaking down. Peter was one of the strongest men she knew, but this tragic accident was too much for him. She reached up, pulled his head down, and put her arms around his neck. She felt his whole body trembling, and his cheek on hers was wet with tears. Her lips broadened in a maternal fashion, and she held him as his body shook and he struggled to hold the tears back and to control the sobbing. She murmured inaudible and meaningless phrases, stroking his back, as she might have comforted a small boy who had fallen and hurt himself.
“That’s all right, Peter,” she whispered. “It’s all right to cry. I do it myself sometimes.”
The paroxysms that shook Peter Winslow went on for some time, and then finally began to mitigate. He cleared his throat, pulled himself away, and turned to stare out the window. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose. Clearing his throat, he said hoarsely, “I . . . I haven’t done that in a long time.”
“Anyone can do that at times like this.”
“Not me. I’ve never had to go through anything like this,” Peter said and shook his head almost violently. “What if she dies, Jolie?”
“She’s not going to die. The doctor said she wouldn’t.”
“What if she’s paralyzed and can’t walk again? Do you know what that would mean to her?”
“It would be terrible, but we mustn’t think of it. We must pray that God will do a healing work.”
“She doesn’t believe in God.”
“But we do. You and I can pray.”
Peter did not move. He stood there stiffly, his hands clenched in front of him, and he did not answer. Jolie waited for him to respond, and finally he muttered almost inaudibly, “She’s got to walk. I d
on’t know what I’d do if I had to live the rest of my life knowing she was a cripple because of me.”
Jolie felt a sudden mixture of anguish, grief—and jealousy. She knew now that she had been jealous of Avis Warwick for a long time. The woman had wealth and had captivated Peter Winslow with her wiles, as she had many men in the past. Jolie had always been possessive of Peter; now she recognized that her feelings for him were not simply those of a young girl with a crush on an older man. They had grown much deeper than that.
Now an anger arose in Jolie over Avis’s foolishness in putting herself into such a dangerous situation. She was headstrong and accustomed to having her own way, and it had finally brought her to this place, with a dark shadow hanging over her. Still, Jolie could not speak about any of this to Peter. She laid her hand on his arm, bowed her head, and began to pray silently. It was a difficult prayer for her. She had to force herself to say the words without the emotion that should accompany it. If it had been Easy or Peter or Clinton, or any of her other friends, it would have been simple, but now to pray for this woman who had come like a thief in the night to steal the man she loved required a force of will such as she had never had to exercise before.
And then something came to Jolie—a thought that forced itself into her mind so powerfully she knew it did not rise from her own heart. She heard no voice, yet so vivid was the thought that came to her, it was almost as if it were spoken aloud.
For a few moments Jolie struggled with the impulse, telling herself that it was just a stray thought, but it grew stronger. She remembered one of the things George Camrose had told her was that Jesus spoke to His sheep. Finally she gave up the battle and said, “Peter, I think God wants me to pray for you.”
“Why . . . I guess I need all the prayer I can get.”
The Shadow Portrait Page 20