Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  I must have been mad, she thought, a desperate, cold fear taking hold of her and hanging on. I must have been temporarily insane.

  She tried to calm the panic before it choked her, before fear suffocated her. It'll be all right when he opens his eyes, she thought desperately. This is Johnny, Johnny whom I love. He won't look like such a stranger when he opens his eyes.

  But somewhere inside a voice that spoke too late told her that before she had been mad, and now she was sane, that nothing would be all right for a long time to come.

  She was torn between willing him to open his eyes and calm her terror and wanting to jump up and escape before he could wake. Before she could decide to move he stirred.

  She froze, watching him, terror clutching her from every angle.

  He did not grunt or moan or roll over. Merely he was asleep, and then he was awake, his eyes open, gazing full into hers.

  She opened her mouth on a soundless gasp, and then an unbelievable, indescribable look passed over his face, shocking her to rigid silence; and his voice when he spoke was deep with horror.

  "My God," said Johnny Winterhawk. "My God, what have I done?" And the brightest dream of her life shattered into sawdust.

  Twenty-one

  They stared at each other for a long, appalled moment, each taking stock of the mute dismay and shock in the other's eyes. "My God," he said again.

  Then he angled himself up and around to a sitting position on the bed beside her, and she knew that suddenly, after all that had passed between them, he felt awkward being naked in front of her, as if she were a complete stranger. Immediately she was ashamed of the delicate, sweet-sexy negligee she was wearing, that she had put on for him, teasing, wanton, during the long hours that they had not slept. She drew the sheet over herself, not watching as Johnny pulled open a drawer and stuck his long legs into an old pair of Levi's.

  She was in a state of shock, as though someone else had been inhabiting her body, and she had awakened to find herself in an unrecognizable world.

  She said, "I...are we crazy? Did we go crazy?"

  "Looks like it," said Johnny Winterhawk, fastening his jeans. He sounded coolly matter-of-fact, as though nothing of the past few days touched him.

  "But...but how? Jo...I..." she stammered. It no longer seemed right to call him by his first name. "How could it happen?"

  "People go crazy every day, don't they?" He shrugged. "Call it temporary insanity." He threw up his head and laughed in angry self-mockery, turned and walked out into the saloon.

  Temporary insanity. Was that what it was, that feeling that she had found her soulmate, that with Johnny she was safe forever? Smith dressed shakily, her hands stopping and starting as her mind raced over the facts, as though unable to work on automatic pilot while so much of her brain's energy was needed for thinking. How could such deep, such soul-deep love be insanity?

  But what else could you call it? He had kidnapped her, he was her enemy. Wasn't he?

  Finally she forced her mind blank, focussing on the simple actions, button after button, as though she had never performed them before....

  There was a tall, dark stranger in the galley when she came out, making coffee in two mugs. His name was Johnny Winterhawk, and she knew nothing about him.

  "We're a pretty extreme case," she said, with a faint attempt at humour.

  "And then some," said Johnny. He carried the coffee to the table in the saloon, and Smith looked around and wondered how she had ever felt at home in this boat, or imagined it held peace for her. It was her prison, wasn't it? It had never been anything else.

  "We aren't the first and we won't be the last to marry strangers, but probably most of those others at least had the excuse of alcohol."

  "God," she breathed. That's right, we're married, she thought. Perhaps that was what had snapped them out of it. She felt as though her submerged self, which had several times in the past few days tried to come to her rescue and been pushed back, had panicked after last night and become strong enough to overcome all her insane illusions.

  Married. That chilled the blood, that really did.

  She asked, "Can we get it annulled?"

  He was sitting on the settee opposite, the table separating them. They had sat like this before, late at night, talking, but now there was no closeness—no artificial, insanity-produced closeness—to bridge the distance and make her feel cozily cocooned with him. Now the air was cold and clear and she felt as though she were at a board meeting.

  "I don't know," said Winterhawk, gingerly sipping the scalding coffee. "That may depend on whether we're willing to lie about consummation."

  She pressed back her panic at the memory his words called up. Consummation. That was the word for it, all right. They had been consumed by it and by each other. Yet she could look at him now and feel nothing but a dry cold fear. She might have convinced herself it was all a dream, except for the languor of her muscles and a lingering sensitivity in her thighs.

  "Would that be perjury?" she wondered aloud, and Winterhawk shrugged.

  "How would anyone prove it?"

  "We'd always have a hold over each other," she said. "We'd never be free."

  "A lot freer than being married," he said, and there was so much self-loathing in his voice she was startled into pain.

  "There's something more, isn't there?" she said. "More than just..." she waved her hand, "...a crazy mistake." She looked away, and he set down his cup and stood up.

  "Marrying a white woman," he said jerkily, "has just about put paid to any hope I had of..." He faded off, staring out the port at the soft grey rain.

  Of being accepted by your people, she finished for him mentally. Of being one of them again.

  She said, "Are your people so opposed to mixed marriage?" and realized she did not know how her own father would feel about it.

  "I have already embraced too much of the white man's world. I renounced my Indian status when I was eighteen, and that is irrevocable. My wife cannot become an Indian. My children can never be Indian unless I marry a status Indian—and even that would require a change in the law."

  His voice was hoarse with anguish. She gazed at his back, the muscles taut with the effort of controlling his emotions. Suddenly, irrelevantly, she was thinking, I'm glad we're not really in love. I'm glad I don't have to fight against that. That will always be the most important thing in your life, and I'd hate that. If I loved you I wouldn't want to take second place to anything. I'd want you to love me without doubts or reservations—the way you did when we thought we were made for each other.

  ***

  She jumped ship an hour later, when he went to the marina for gas and supplies. She waited till Johnny was out of sight, then slipped through the hatch. She left her wedding ring on the table and her dress with its tiny golden horseshoe on the chair where Johnny had thrown it. She could not bear to touch it. She took two plastic shopping bags and her handbag, and went into the tiny marina store.

  Johnny saw her there when he went in to pay for the gas. He looked at her the way he had looked at her once before, as though he had dug his own grave. Then he smiled faintly.

  "So long," he said, and she felt herself stiffen inside to ward off any regret she might feel. She raised a hand and a smile.

  "So long," she agreed, and he turned and went through the door, and she watched him move across the dock toward the proudly beautiful shape of Outcast.

  ***

  "I'm sorry, miss," the nurse said coolly. "Dr. Collier isn't in the hospital today."

  Smith sighed. "Well, who is?" she asked. She felt weary and irritable, and there was something in the nurse's attitude that was making her grit her teeth.

  "There are many doctors here in the hospital, of course," the nurse said, with the air of one talking to a cretin. "Is it for a patient? What patient would it be for?"

  Smith took a deep breath. "Cordwainer St. John," she said levelly. "Isn't there a doctor covering the whole—"

  "I'm
sorry, miss!" the nurse said, shocked, as though Smith had breached all the rules of etiquette at once. "Are you a journalist? Mr. St. John isn't allowed any visitors."

  "I am not a journalist. I'm family. What other doctor is on his case?" Smith said. She was doing a slow burn, but there was a backlog of feeling in her that certainly wasn't the nurse's fault.

  "That doctor is with another patient," the nurse said, as though this were a triumph. "But I can tell you myself that Mr. St. John is seeing no visitors."

  Smith took a breath and tried to detach. "When will the doctor be free?"

  "I really couldn't say how long—"

  "Who's the head nurse on this ward?"

  "I am." Another triumph.

  "All right, Head Nurse," said Smith, her anger coming out like little bullets, with a soft, deadly accuracy. "Listen carefully, because I am not going to repeat myself. I am Shulamith St. John. Cordwainer St. John is my father. My father thinks that I have been kidnapped by activists. I am here to see and reassure him. He is not expecting me. Now—" she glanced at her wrist, where there was still no watch, then coldly up at the clock above the woman's head and back to her goggling eyes "—you have two minutes to go in there and prepare my father for the shock of seeing me. Because in two minutes I am going in to see him."

  The woman looked paralyzed with astonishment. Not only her father, of course, thought she had been kidnapped by activists, Smith remembered belatedly.

  "Oh! Ah!" the nurse gasped as Smith spoke, and then "Oh!" again. "Wait here, please, just wait here!" she cried and dashed off down the corridor. She returned in record time with a man in a white coat who introduced himself politely as Dr. Ramasingh.

  "Your father will be delighted to see you, of course, Miss St. John," he said. "When the initial shock has worn off I am confident your visit will do him a great deal of good."

  "Not that he's doing so badly, in spite of the radio reports?" she asked dryly, and then bit her lip as she saw her error. If her story was going to stick she would have to stop talking as though she had followed her father's progress on the radio.

  Dr. Ramasingh didn't seem to notice anything. Outside the door of a private room he motioned her to silence. "Wait here," he said.

  She had caught a ride from the marina with a rowdy group of teenagers who dropped her at the ferry dock. There she called for a helicopter pickup, and was dropped in downtown Vancouver. Smith had taken a taxi straight to the hospital.

  Rolly Middleton was in the room when she went in, looking very businesslike, so she had probably guessed right about her father's condition.

  "Hello, Daddy," she said with a smile. "How are you?"

  The man in the bed looked almost as brown and robust as ever; the strongest signs of illness were the white band around his wrist and a bruising around his eyes. If he seemed shrunken in her eyes, that wasn't because of his illness.

  "Shulamith!" he croaked, and the croak was caused by emotion, not weakness. "They've let you go? Who was it? Where did they take you?"

  She crossed to the side of his bed and kissed him. "How are you Rolly?" she asked the business-suited figure by the window. "Let me go? Who? Don't you remember, Daddy?" she said. "I was on a boat with friends. We only turned on the radio this morning. I came back as fast as I could. How are you?"

  He blinked and looked at her from under lowered brows. "What the devil are you talking about?"

  She said slowly, looking at him, "I left Saturday night for a trip on a friend's boat. That must have slipped your mind."

  "It must, eh? All right, Rolly," he nodded shortly. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  Rolly lounged away from the window. "Right," he said. "Good to see you back, Smith. You had us all worried. Give Valerie a call, won't you?"

  When the door closed behind him her father pushed at a pillow and sat up straighter. "What happened?" he demanded, his eyes searching her face.

  "I was on a boat with friends," she repeated doggedly. "You—"

  "Now you listen to me, girl." The tone of his voice brought her up short, as always. She cast him a glance: her father's head was lowered, like a bulldog's, and his eyes riveted her. "Did those filthy bastards rape you?" Smith was mute with astonishment. "You don't have to tell the world, Shulamith. You don't even have to tell the police. Nobody has to know the details of what you went through. Believe me, I can make that stick."

  He paused, but she was speechless. "But you have to tell me. I promise you. I give you my word that those bastards will be hunted down and made to pay. No goddamn activist is going to hurt my daughter and get away with it." He held up his hand to stop her speech. "And you don't have to tell me that the law is no damn good at getting rapists. I'm not talking about the law. A man who leaves his daughter's rapist to the law—" he said the word with disgust "—was born a fool. Now you just tell me here privately..."

  Smith was aghast, shaken to the core. This had never occurred to her, however clearly Johnny Winterhawk had seen it. "Daddy, I.. .." She swallowed. "Truly I wasn't kidnapped. I was on a boat with a...with friends."

  "What the hell are you playing at, girl?"

  "Daddy, I'm not playing at anything! I—"

  "Listen," he said. "I've seen more liars than you've had hot suppers, and I'm telling you, girl, you're lying, and you won't stick it. They're going to be onto you, and they're going to be onto you hard. There isn't a cop or a journalist anywhere who's going to swallow that story of yours. They're going to think you're protecting someone, and they're going to want to know why."

  "Then I advise you to make sure they leave me alone." Her voice was cold and hard, perfect slivers of ice. She had never spoken to her father in that tone before, but he didn't react. He merely looked at her, assessing the information coming from her as he would that from a ticker tape or computer.

  The head nurse bustled in then, all coy smiles, talking about "enough excitement" and "happy news" and "supposed to rest." The woman got to within ten feet of her father's bed.

  "Get out of here," he said flatly, as though she were an inferior species of life, and without a word the head nurse turned and went.

  The bully outbullied, Smith thought, finding it in herself to feel sorry for the head nurse. Her father took a breath.

  "I can't buy every goddamned cop and newspaper in the province," he told her. "Even if I wanted to. So you better get your story sewn up tight—because no matter what you've promised those bastards, I am not going to let them get away with this. Nobody is going to do this to my daughter and get away with it!"

  She was halfway across the lobby downstairs when they came to meet her, mikes waving and cameras flashing. "Miss St. John!" one began. "How does it feel—" "Where were you held, Miss St. John?" "What did your captors—" In an instant the hospital lobby was bedlam. Smith was amazed and appalled by their numbers. Had they been staking out the hospital, or had Head Nurse taken her revenge by tipping them off?

  Just then the main doors opened and a television camera and crew rushed self-importantly in. The little bitch, thought Smith wildly, has she called everybody in town?

  She picked her position near the door, then waited while all the mikes and cameras jockeyed for position.

  "I have been on a sailing holiday with friends. I did not hear any news reports and did not know my father was ill until this morning. I returned as soon as possible. Thank you."

  With an agility that surprised them all she turned and was out the front door while they were still shouting questions. There was a taxi just outside the door, and she jumped in.

  "Drive!" she shouted to the driver. He moved his head slowly around and looked at her, chewing ponderously. His hands were full of money. He had been counting.

  "I'm waiting on a fare, lady," he said. "Din't you see I ain't got my light on?" He gestured lazily at the roof with one wad of notes.

  They were coming out the door behind her. She wanted to kill him. "How about around the block for a hundred dollars? Now!" she insisted, slamming the
lock on her door as what looked like half the hospital erupted onto the pavement, the television cameraman in the lead.

  The driver's head jerked so far around she thought it was going to fall off, and his eyes widened hugely.

  "Holy smokes!" he declared in stupefaction, and, no longer taking his own sweet time, he had the car in gear and a foot on the gas and was steering out into the road even before he got his eyes facing front.

  "Little lady," he said calmly, as his tires screeched around the first corner, "now, it ain't none o' my business, but what you done?"

  Smith laughed, as much from the release of tension as from the thought of this stranger leaping to the aid of someone he imagined might be a criminal. The brotherhood of man, she supposed, but she saw that he was tucking his cash away in an inside pocket as though he had learned that prudence was the better part of brotherhood.

  "Nothing," she said. "Just trying to visit my father. Will you pull up here?" There was another cab at the curb. Smith jumped out, dropping a one-hundred-dollar bill on the front seat beside him. Always carry a hundred dollars in a spare pocket, her father had advised her, and she always had, though she had never before had such urgent need of it. She was in the other car before the man had finished thanking her.

  ***

  Oh, what a luxury a bath was, after a few days on a boat! Smith lay back and let the perfumed heat soak away her worries, her aches, the memory of Johnny's body on hers....

  She thought of her father and the reporters she had eluded. It wouldn't be long before they were at the house, she thought, closing her ears against the muffled sound of a ringing telephone. She was going to have to do some thinking; she was going to have to get a story that would stick. She thought of Johnny Winterhawk with a vague sense of loss. If only she could discuss this problem with him.

  Temporary insanity. Was that what it was? An emotional heat so scorching that at times it was difficult to believe she wouldn't carry the scars for life. It had opened a cauldron inside her soul that she hadn't known existed.