She climbed the little ladder and poked her head under the tarp. She became aware of the rain again, blasting volubly at the heavy canvas, and she shivered. How nice it would be to be inside the bus, dry and moving.
There were three hanks of sturdy nylon clothesline, thousand-pound test by the look of it. She had used similar for swings and around-the-house jobs after her father grew too ill to do them. Two were evidently fifty-foot lengths, the third a hundred feet. “Two hundred feet, in three pieces!” she called down.
“Three wheels, then,” Thatch muttered. “Don’t want to cut it unnecessarily.”
Gordon tried the cord against the rim of one wheel. The rope was much smaller in diameter than the original tire, so the fit was quite loose; but the metal ridges held it in well.
“Survey for anchoring points,” Thatch told Zena. This was too much. “Don’t order me about!” she snapped.
Thatch set the last wheel against the rear of the vehicle and started out himself, shading his eyes with his hand to peer through the mist.
“I’ll do it!” Zena cried, chagrined. She had objected to female work; how could she object to male work now? “I’m sorry. Tell me what you want.”
“We’ll both do it,” he said. “Visibility’s too poor for one.” If he were pleased at his victory, or even aware of it, he did not show it. He was merely doing his job, taking each hazard as it came—including difficult females. Zena found herself at a loss to adjust to such an attitude; she was accustomed to push-and-shove, action and reaction.
They moved out, ploughing through water that seemed to be rising even as they searched. She tried to swim, but that was little better; there was a current in it. The water was tugging her somewhere, making her uneasy despite her other discomforts. Where was this lake going? What might be carried along in it? Old tires? Broken bottles? Dead horses?
They spotted the lined posts of a guard rail, well anchored but almost submerged. And a tall, firmly-positioned direction sign. Other than these, all was blank water. There were trees, but they were set far back from the highway, useless for this purpose.
“Three tie-ons should do it, for a start,” Thatch said. “Fifty, one hundred, and one-fifty.”
“I don’t see how—” Zena started.
Thatch headed back, not trying to explain. Damn him!
Gordon had split the end of one length of line and formed it into two little loops. These he hooked over the projecting ends of one bicycle wheel’s axle, and fastened them in place by screwing the wheel-nuts down tight against them. The arrangement made little sense to Zena. Obviously the wheel could now be hung from the rope in such a way that it would turn freely, but one turning wheel would hardly provide the leverage required.
“We have anchorages,” Thatch said. “Fifty, one hundred, and one-fifty feet.”
“Wrong ratios,” Gordon said, completing the split-end mounting of another wheel. “Twenty-five, fifty and one hundred is the most we can do—a little less, actually, allowing for the ties and the wheel diameters. I hope the rope can take the strain, even so. Here, I’ll show you.”
Gordon produced a crayon and drew on the glass of the bus’s back window. The lines were waxy and faint, but could be followed:
“You see, we have a three-stage reduction system,” Gordon said. “Each pulley doubles the force, reducing the forward motion by half. By the time it gets to the load— which will be the bus—our projected one horsepower of pull has become eight horsepower. But our hundred feet of forward motion has become only twelve and a half. No way around that; we’ve got to give up distance in favor of power. And we won’t really get that much power; maybe fifty per cent will be taken up by the inefficiency of the system. Wheel resistance, rope friction, and so forth. But it should be enough to get the job done, eventually.”
“But the rope’s only good for a thousand pounds,” Zena protested. “Half a ton. The bus must weigh ten times that!”
“Good point, and I am concerned,” Gordon said. “But there are mitigations. The cord around each wheel is in effect doubled, and we can double the high-tension link too. That should give us a ton—and of course we’re hauling, not lifting. If we’re careful…”
Yes, he had thought it out. What a change from sexy blonde Gloria! Gordon was a more practical male than he chose to let himself believe.
Tediously they set it up and strung it out. They made the anchorages to the posts of the fence, and fastened the base rope to the front of the motor home. “Take off the brakes!” Thatch yelled to Gus.
Then they trudged out and took hold of the front rope, near the lead wheel. There were some last-minute adjustments to get the assembly straight; actually the wheels were out of sight as they lay under the water. But when they made a concerted pull the bike wheels came up and the rope moved. It was working!
They moved the bus forward ten feet. Then Zena ran back to prop the wheels while the men held on. The resistance of the system that made the hauling hard also helped them hold it in place between pulls. Gus could have used the brakes, but it seemed better to leave him out of it for now.
Another set of attachments, another ten or twelve feet. And another, and another. Hours passed, and the gloom of evening closed in, and still the rain pelted down mercilessly. There seemed to be no one living in all the world except the three of them—and of course lazy Gus, dry and warm inside.
Zena felt the first stirrings of what she suspected could blossom into a full-fledged hate-affair. This preposterous situation!
At last they reached unflooded roadbed. And Gus let them in. But it was not the comfort she had expected in her delirium of fatigue. The motor had been dead for hours and the interior was chill.
“We’ve got to caulk this crate,” Gus said. “The water came in. The rug’s ruined!”
Zena stifled another hysterical laugh. “The rug!”
“Not only that,” Gus continued seriously. “The refrigerator’s stopped.”
Cold as she was, Zena hardly cared. She moved back to poke into the closets, seeking more dry clothing. Even one of those dowdy dresses would do.
“Water must have snuffed the pilot light,” Gordon said. “That’s of small moment. But you’re right: we can’t let the water flood us out every time we pass through a lake. We’ll have to seal off every access. We can put plastic sheeting over the external access panels, braced by hard-board and sealed over with furnace tape. Main problems will be the passenger door and the engine compartment. We’ll have to forage for what we need.”
Gus looked at him. “You know, I think I like you better as a man. You’ve got a head for practicalities.”
Exactly Zena’s thought. Gordon did not deign to answer.
Zena found a warm dress and shut herself into the bathroom to change. She could hear the men talking, despite the noise of rain outside.
“Now get the engine going!” Gus told Thatch.
“I don’t know anything about motors!” Thatch protested.
“I do,” Gordon interjected. “Gloria’s a fool about cars—that’s why we ran out of gas. But I can—”
“You can start it?” Gus cried happily.
“I’ll need a light, and some shelter when I lift the exterior access panel. So the rain doesn’t short it out all over again. And some dry cloth, and tools.”
“Fix him up!” Gus snapped to Thatch.
“There’s an interior access,” Thatch said. By the sound of it, he was rummaging in the closets.
“Why so there is!” Gordon exclaimed. “Beautiful!”
Zena emerged from the bathroom to find Gordon at work between the two front seats. She didn’t know what he did, but before long there was the blessed roar of the motor. They were on their way again!
She slept for an hour on the back couch, then woke as the bus stopped. For a moment she thought it meant more flooding, but then she heard a woman’s sharp voice.
“Three men?” the unseen female inquired. “Long trip north? I’m hungry and I’m wet,
but I’m not ripe for harem duty yet! Move on—I’ll take my chances here!”
After more dialogue, too low to be intelligible, the door closed and they moved on. Zena smiled, thinking of the harem accusation. The nomenclature was wrong. A harem would be one man and three women. Then she frowned, realizing that the nameless woman would probably pay for her spirit with her life. Where would she find another lift to the mountains?
Harem… she thought as she drifted back to sleep.
She dreamed of being decked out in filmy petticoat-trousers, waiting for the Sultan.
Abruptly she was awake. Harem! That was what Gus and Thatch had been planning! Obvious all along, but she had somehow blinded herself to it. Nothing so ambitious as an empire—just making time while the sun shone.
She peered out at the rain. Sun?
That faceless girl—left behind to die, just because she had pride and spunk.
Zena was on her feet. “Turn around!” she screamed, rushing up the passage.
Gus and Gordon, nodding in the dining alcove, snapped alert. “What?” Gus demanded.
“You left a girl out there to die,” Zena accused him. “Now turn about and go back and pick her up!”
“Are you crazy? That was an hour ago!” Gus said.
“Twenty-five minutes ago,” Gordon corrected him, looking at his dainty feminine watch.
“I don’t care how long ago!” Zena yelled, sounding hysterical in her own ears. “Thatch, you turn around.”
“Uh-uh,” Gus said. “She didn’t want to come.”
“Because you threatened her with—turn it, Thatch!”
“She’s got a point,” Gordon said. “I haven’t felt easy about that myself. At least we could have given her a lift to high ground.”
“Look,” Gus said reasonably. “We never threatened her with anything. You’re not even interested in women, are you? She jumped to a conclusion.”
“Then we should have disabused her of that conclusion,” Gordon said, the color rising to his face.
Gus raised his two hands in demurral. “Don’t forget— she was black.”
“Black!” Zena cried. “You turned her away for racial—”
“No!” Gus said. “I’m no racist, and neither is Thatch. Especially not about young women. But she must have seen our white skins and been afraid. No way she’d set foot inside this bus! If I were a white girl invited aboard with three black men, I’d feel the same.”
“Race never entered my mind,” Gordon said. “But your point is well taken. Even Gloria would hesitate. In retrospect, I think we are guilty. We should have reassured her, or tried to.”
“We’ll lose time,” Gus said. “We could all drown!”
But the vote was now two to two. Gus pondered a moment, then capitulated. “All right, Thatch. They’ll just have to learn the hard way.”
Obediently, Thatch turned. They made their way back in silence.
It was difficult to locate the precise spot where they had left the girl, because the interstate was largely featureless in the rain. They cruised for thirty-five minutes—more than far enough—but didn’t see any figure on the street. The pouring rain and thickening fog made a wider search impossible. The girl was gone.
“She could have flagged us down, if she had wanted to,” Gordon said.
Gus was disgusted. “All that time and gas wasted. And the water getting deeper all the time. We could have used the break to forage for caulking materials, too. Are you satisfied now?”
“At least we tried,” Zena said. “We aren’t savages.” But over an hour had been wasted, which meant another inch of rain and possibly another six inches of channelized flooding. Had she prejudiced their own chances by her foolish quest?
“Have we passed the Suwannee River yet?” Gordon inquired.
“No,” Gus replied. “Why the hell do you think I’m in such a hurry?”
That hardly helped Zena’s conscience. The worst flooding would be in the Suwannee River valley, naturally—no peaceful stream of folklore and song today!
They moved on north, glumly. One hour, two hours, slowly because of the deteriorating visibility. Gus began to hum “Way down upon the Suwannee River …” and it was all Zena could do to resist the baiting. She began to nod again—and the bus slowed.
Flooding again? She held her breath. No, Thatch had spotted another person. A woman in a yellow cape, trying futilely to fix the motor of her car.
“I’ll talk to her!” Zena cried. “You men keep your big mouths shut!”
Gordon smiled, Gus frowned, and Thatch seemed to be indifferent. Zena got out, ignoring the harsh beat of water on her head, hair, and third set of dry clothes, and approached the woman. She felt like a procurer, and it made her sick. But the alternative—
“We have a man who might be able to start it for you,” Zena called.
The woman faced her, the fine lines of her face set off by the fringe of rain-bedraggled hair outside her rain cape. “It’s out of gas and the battery’s dead. I just wanted you to know I was in trouble. I waited in the car for hours, knowing the highway had been closed to traffic, hoping—until I heard you come. Are you a rescue vehicle?”
“No such luck,” Zena said. “But we’ll help you.”
“You saved my life!”
For a fate worse than death? “Look, we’re a party of four, at the moment. Three men—and one of them seems to have notions of picking up grateful girls. You know. I hit him, and I think he’s harmless. But with this flooding—we may be trapped together for days.”
“Nothing could be worse for me than being trapped here.”
“That’s what I thought. But—”
“I don’t think this rain is ever going to end!”
“Not soon, I’m afraid. We’ve already passed through serious flooding, and the worst is coming. Frankly, I think you’d better hitch a ride with us. I just wanted you to know—”
“I understand. There won’t be any trouble. Usually I travel with my husband, but he’s in California right now. I don’t think you appreciate how grateful I am for the chance to get moving again.”
“You don’t have to be grateful—but it will help if you pull your weight. We’re all dead tired from hauling this tonnage out of a flooded section.”
“I understand,” the woman repeated firmly. “I’m Karen Jimson.”
“Zena Emers.” They shook hands formally, while the rain beat down on both their heads. “Let’s get the heck inside!”
They went up to the bus and climbed in. “Karen, this is Gus, Thatch, Gordon,” Zena introduced. “Men, this is Mrs. Jimson. She’s out of gas, so will ride with us—until the rain stops.”
Karen nodded in turn to each of the men. The light of the interior and the clinging wetness of her clothes under the cape showed her to be a young, buxom girl, not quite running to fat. “I have to fetch some things from the car,” she said.
“Married!” Gus expostulated the moment Karen was out of earshot.
“Why, whatever difference does that make?” Zena inquired sweetly.
Soon Karen was back with two small suitcases. “We’re all tired,” Gordon said. “Why don’t we park here and sleep? I can start the motor in the morning—and delay is better than cracking into something from fatigue. Thatch hasn’t had a break since we started, has he?”
“I don’t think we’d better stop,” Zena said, still conscious of the delay she had caused. “The water is still rising.”
“Then let me drive,” Gordon said. “Thatch has to have relief.”
Even Gus had to agree to that. “You girls take the back bunks,” he said. “A bed pulls down above the driving compartment, but we can’t use that while we’re in motion. Thatch and I can use the dining alcove.”
There was no protest. The men folded down the alcove-bed, and Zena closed off the rear section, forming it into a room. She stripped, dumped the dripping things in the sink on top of the last batch, found an oversized negligee in the female closet, donned it, a
nd lay down. She expected sleep to come rapidly, but instead she lay tired and awake.
Karen removed her wet garments more slowly. Zena had not meant to snoop, but couldn’t resist. Karen’s figure, unlike Gloria’s, was genuine; she was a well-fleshed woman.
Karen opened one of her suitcases and removed something. Zena could not make out what it was. The woman leaned over, did something, and finally straightened.
Then Zena saw the needle. Karen had injected something into her own thigh.
Zena felt a throb of dismay. Karen had seemed like an ideal prospect for the long haul: sensible, well-adjusted, handsome. Obviously she wasn’t. Drug addiction would be an overwhelming liability in this situation!
Should she tell the others? No, that would do no good, and the truth would surely emerge in its own course. Besides, she didn’t want to admit she had been peeking.
How much misery and crime was allowed to flourish unchallenged in the world, she wondered, because of the silence of hypocrites like herself? Perhaps it was best that it all be washed out by the deluge. She knew she would have a bad night—but instead she slept soundly throughout.
The bus stopped in the early gloom, waking everyone. Gordon turned off the motor and stood, stretching. “I’m hungry,” he said.
Gus, sleepy, started to protest the delay, then saw what lay ahead. A broad lake obviously too deep to drive through. The Suwannee was at hand!
“I’ve done my stint,” Gordon said as he raided the refrigerator. “No sense wasting gas, which is already low. We’re stranded for the time being.”
He did not really believe in the permanency of the rain, Zena remembered. No sense arguing.
“Thatch, do something!” Gus cried. Gus believed!
Thatch peered about. “No anchorages for pulleys,” he said. “I’m afraid this is it. We’ll just have to swim.”
A fair assessment, Zena thought. The bus had been nice, very nice, but they couldn’t stay in that cocoon forever while the water rose.
“Get this machine across!” Gus shouted. His volume made the others wince. He seemed to be afraid.
Thatch looked at him helplessly. “If I try to drive it there, it’ll stall.”
Rings of Ice Page 4