She could hear D’Arcy’s excited shriek all the way out in the hall.
Chapter Twenty-Three
If Rachel hadn’t left at that moment, she would never have gotten away from the Butler house. As it was, Jim—alerted by D’Arcy’s screams—bolted from the front door to stop her just as she pulled the Toyota away from the curb. He stood for a moment watching her and then ran to find his car. But he was too late; she had quickly turned down Lenwood Street and was out of sight.
Once on Highway 17 going southward Rachel had to admit that all of the weather warnings were true. It was all she could do to keep the little station wagon, even weighed down with all her belongings, on the road. From the town of Ravenel just outside of Charleston to the little hamlet of Osborn, Rachel inched the Toyota along the highway, fighting the buffeting easterly gale that had swept in from the sea. She passed cars abandoned by the roadside at the height of the storm, but was thankful that the rain was slacking off.
She kept the radio turned on. There was little music, even on the FM band. Most stations were devoting their time to weather bulletins which now reported the storm had moved inland, turning northward through North Carolina and Virginia, dumping a record amount of rain as the strong winds and abnormally high tides were flooding the Carolina coasts.
It was several hours before Rachel finally reached the highway at Hazel Gardens, running east from Route 17 to Draytonville, and her stomach was burning with the cups of hot tea she’d stopped to get at drive-ins along the way to alleviate her tiredness. When a roadblock of state police stopped her on the eastbound highway to the coast, turning back tourists and those who didn’t live in the flooded coast area, Rachel was grateful for her South Carolina license plates and her driver’s license, which gave her home address as Draytonville.
“The waters up pretty bad down there,” the state patrolman told her as he returned her license. “They’re bedding down people in the high school gym and some of the churches. And there won’t be any drop in the flood until this wind changes.”
“I’ll be all right,” Rachel assured him.
But as she started ahead, Rachel had a sudden vivid memory of the narrow asphalt road that wound with the turnings of the river, especially that part of it that led between the fresh water lakes to the big house on the old Indian mound at Belle Haven. She would have to worry about that when she got there, she told herself with more courage than she felt. She was certain Beau Tillson would still be there. He would never leave, not if he thought he could save any part of his land.
She hardly recognized Draytonville. The intersection with the service station and the Polar Bear Drive-In was blocked with an assortment of cars and pickup trucks diverted by more state police. Even the school buses were parked there, and Rachel realized the high school, just east of Main Street, must be in danger of flooding.
It was worse than that. As she kept the motor of the Toyota running, waiting to be let through the checkpoint, a figure loomed out of the twilight and leaned toward her open window. “Miz Rachel, what you doing back here?” It was J.T. Young, in high rubber boots and a yellow raincoat with the hood thrown back. “We’re having a hard time down here,” he went on before she could answer. “Downtown’s underwater and the river’s still rising, it’s almost up to the second story in Screven’s building—they made Billy come back and leave the co-op offices, he took out what papers he could. They’re taking all these people”—he nodded toward the pickups and the waiting cars—”up to Hazel Gardens.”
“I’ve got to get through, J.T.” Her voice trembled. But she couldn’t lie about where she was going. “I have to get out to see if some ... friends are all right,” she finished lamely. “Miz Rachel, you be careful,” he warned her. “It’s dangerous down here right now. If them Beaumont dikes go, the flood will sweep this here town, you can bet on it. Tillson had to let the developers in that he hates so much with their heavy machinery to see if they could help reinforce those old levees. And he’s a damn fool to stay out there at that old house—he won’t come out alive if they go. Don’t go nowhere’s near the river, y’hear?”
The Draytonville chief of police was the one who examined her driver’s license this time. He was so tired, Rachel saw with guilty relief, he didn’t even question her.
“If you can’t get out to your house,” the chief warned her as he passed her through the white-painted barriers of the roadblock, “you come right back, y’hear? I don’t want to have to send somebody down to look for you.”
“J.T.” Rachel slowed the Toyota to call to the farmer, who was going back to his truck. “Tell me something quick. How’s Til Coffee and Loretha, and ... Til,” she faltered.
She wanted to ask him if Beau was really still at Belle Haven and to know more about the condition of the flood there, but she didn’t want to betray where she was headed.
“Coffee? He was out there working on the dikes most of the day,” he answered her, “with the rest of the people around here. Coffee may be still out there, to tell the truth, I just don’t know. I heard about an hour ago nearly everybody’s come back now since the water’s still rising, and they didn’t say if’n there was a few what stayed to keep an eye on things or not. There’s not much people can do now but pray, I guess, and stay on high ground. You couldn’t get me within ten miles of that riverbank, Miz Rachel,” he said fervently. “If those Beaumont levees do bust, that point at Belle Haven’ll be the first thing the river takes away. And the town down yonder’ll go after that.”
“W-what about Beaumont Tillson?” she had to ask.
He shrugged. “Still hanging on out there at his old house, I guess. I expect no hell nor high water’s going to move a Beaumont off of that land right now. And don’t nobody around here want to argue with him neither.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. She’d gotten the information she wanted after all.
The state patrol roadblock at the intersection was on comparatively dry high ground now that it had stopped raining. But the river road coming out from town dipped immediately to follow the winding course of the Ashepoo almost at water level. Now the banks had overflowed and it was all gray—the river, the water, the early waning light in a sky ridden by storm clouds.
This stretch of road had always been a melancholy place, with its big overhanging live oak trees and their trailing Spanish moss, but now it was positively forbidding. The asphalt seemed to be covered with a film of water the entire way—hopefully shallow, Rachel told herself, staring at it.
She grabbed the steering wheel with both hands and shut her eyes briefly, gathering her courage. Then she let out the clutch. As she moved forward, each twisting turn seemed to present a view of solid flood. It was almost like driving straight across St. Helena Sound—now studded with half-drowned trees and occasional higher ridges of earth showing tufts of grass—and more terrifying than anything she could have pictured. In places she could only guess at the roadbed. She prayed the engine wouldn’t die.
It seemed an eternity before she got to the lakes. The light was fading; the clock hands on the dashboard told her it was a little past five o’clock. The muscles of her neck and shoulders were cramped tightly from fatigue and tension. And then when she got to the point where the road dipped between the lakes, she could have wept.
The road had disappeared. A swift-running current now swept through from the river where the asphalt went down and then up to the old Indian mound on the far side that made the foundation for the house at Belle Haven, hidden behind trees.
Rachel got out of the car, went around to the back, opened it, and pulled out one of her suitcases packed for Philadelphia. She had gone as far as she could in the clothes she’d worn for D’Arcy’s wedding. Now what she needed was something in which to wade—or swim, she thought, shivering—through the flood ahead of her, Quickly, the chill wind whipping at her exposed flesh, she pulled off her dress and shoes and nylons and got into jeans and an old sweatshirt she took out of the suitcase. She decid
ed against shoes, then reconsidered and got out her old Adidas. Then she locked up the car. It was not until she started around the side toward the driver’s seat that she realized the water lapping around her ankles was slightly higher. She froze for a moment, not able to go on.
The night in the marshes. If she didn’t fight it down—what it felt like to be like this again, assailed by oncoming dark and the horror of the rising waters—it would paralyze her, overwhelm her with panic.
And she had to walk into it. There was no escaping that. She had to walk, or swim, to the far side.
Rachel clamped her trembling lips shut and stood with her eyes closed. Moment of silence, she thought almost hysterically.
As she tried to concentrate, her mother’s story of how her father had spent the night in her bedroom long years ago, making love, flitted through her mind. She could almost hear her mother saying. “So the next morning we had a moment of silence together to examine our hearts and our resolve. And then I brought him down to breakfast.”
Somehow the wild desire to giggle at the absurdity of it helped Rachel more than her attempt at calming her thoughts. She opened her eyes and started toward the water. As she stepped into the flood the strong, almost invisible current draining from the river into the lake on the other side tugged at her calves, then her knees, and then up to her thighs. She couldn’t choke back a cry as the ground dipped and she was suddenly up to her neck.
Her mind was almost too numb with fear to try to visualize the road as it had been, it flattened out at the bottom, then started to rise to higher ground. But she could hardly stay on her feet. Branches, twigs, leaves, floated by her rapidly. The temptation to strike out and swim was strong, but she had a feeling that even though she was a strong swimmer, the moment her feet left the roadbed she wouldn’t be able to fight the current and would be swept far into the flooding lake.
“Beau.” She said the name aloud, through stiff lips, and it brought back her courage.
As she waded forward the water deepened only slightly and then began to recede, breast high, waist high, and finally down to her knees. She was sobbing as she walked out on higher ground. She was just taking a deep, hoarse breath when a huge gray shape loomed up at her in the twilight like a primeval monster.
She screamed.
Almost immediately a familiar voice shouted, “Great Jesus, what are you doing here?” Before she could answer it added, “Watch out, that’s a prize Brahma bull, you don’t want to move real quick.”
Rachel was incapable of moving, rooted to the spot as she and the great gray monster stared at each other. Til Coffee emerged from a clump of live oaks carrying a two-by-four in both hands.
“Hold still, I’ll get it,” he said in a low voice. “Just don’t move.”
With wary respect the tall black man eyed the huge humpbacked animal the size of a boxcar. Beads of sweat were already breaking out on Til’s face in spite of the chill wind, but he advanced bravely, crooning with what he evidently thought was irresistible persuasiveness.
“Sweet thing, I love you,” he improvised in his deep baritone. The creature turned its massive head to view the figure with the two-by-four with vast disinterest. “I don’t know what to say to you, big hunk of ugliness, I’m just a city boy, but let me see if I can’t get you to boogie on out of here before you want to eat Miz Rachel.”
Rachel wrapped her arms around her body, still gasping after her journey through the water. She couldn’t do anything but stare as Til crouched lower, inching closer step by step, the board held before him like a samurai warrior brandishing his sword.
“Come on, lift up those mammoth tootsies.” Til’s monotone was almost desperately seductive. “I got a foxy lady cow what looks just like Mount Kilimanjaro waiting for you. Move your big gray self away from that lady or I’ll hit you with this.”
The bull’s ears twitched. Slowly its giant gray haunches undulated and it began to turn. Even more slowly it ambled away to a grove of trees on higher ground.
Til put down the board and let his breath out explosively. “You don’t know how much that took out of me,” he said, looking visibly relieved. “That monster was trying to sit on my Buick a while ago.” He wiped the sweat off his face with the back of his hand. “There are cows all over the place here, they came up to get out of the flood.”
“Oh, Til,” Rachel burst out. She was shivering with cold, and the bull had frightened her as much as it had him. She was so glad to see Til it was all she could do to keep from throwing herself on him. But she was oozing water, she saw, looking down at herself, and Til was mud covered and hardly dry himself in thoroughly soaked jeans, a sweater, and high boots. “I left my station wagon—” She couldn’t finish. She gestured back at the lakes and the Toyota abandoned on the far side. It, too, might be underwater shortly. The big house at Belle Haven, seen through the trees, was reassuring. “What are you doing here?”
She saw his amber eyes darken. “Helping Massa Beau save the old family plantation, what else?” he quipped. He looked her over, suddenly not very pleased with what he saw. “Why did you come back here, Rachel? Don’t you know a lost cause when you see one? You’re one persistent broad, you know that?
In spite of her bedraggled condition, Rachel lifted her chin and met his stare. “I was raised on lost causes, or I wouldn’t be here, Til.” She shivered again, aware of how much wading the road between the lakes had taken out of her.
He glowered at her. “Yeah, but this is dangerous, Rachel, don’t you have any sense, pulling a stunt like that? You’re just as crazy as my wife,” he growled. “She’s out here too.”
“Loretha?” Rachel cried. She couldn’t imagine elegant, beautiful Loretha floundering around in mud and cattle and an ever-rising flood. “What’s she doing here?”’
“I wish you’d stop asking that,” he said irritably. He propped the board against the trunk of a massive oak and brushed his muddy hands together. “The last thing I saw, my lady wife was rounding up cows. Frankly, she’s the only one around here that can scare hell out of them and make these monsters behave. The Dragon Lady says if I got to risk my life, she’s got to come, too, you know how she is. Come over here,” he told her abruptly, “and get out of this wind. You look like you’re turning into an icicle.”
Rachel did as he said, then looked up at his dark, tired features and said softly, “Til, I want to see Beau. Where is he?”
He pulled her farther into the shelter of the trees. “Now you’re here, I guess I can’t make you go back, Rachel,” he said grimly, “but what do you think you’re going to accomplish? The man wants people to let him alone.”
“But do you?” she wanted to know. “You’re out here.”
He looked away, the sudden bleakness of his handsome face wrenchingly familiar. “I did, for a long time, there was no reason for us to get along. But you might say the more I got to know him, the more I figured I had a ... an obligation.” He hesitated. “Did he tell you what happened to him in ‘Nam?”
“I saw what happened to him,” she said quietly.
He looked at her, surprised. “You must have gotten close to him lady, closer than I thought.” He studied her for a long moment. “I never have. All I know is, it was bad. Real bad.
“He was sent to war, Til.” She wrapped her arms around her tightly against the chill of her wet clothes, searching the lawn near the house for some sight of the man she was looking for. “It wasn’t even his own choice, like so many others who went. And when they came back, people didn’t face their guilt but blamed those who fought for them. He wasn’t the only one—we did it to all of them. Til,” she pleaded, “tell me where he is. I want to go to him.”
“Rachel...” His eyes slid away from her. “I don’t know what to tell you. He’s been a damned wreck since you left. It wasn’t hard to get what’s been happening out of him, all it took was a bottle of Jack Daniels between us for him to spill his guts, and frankly, Rachel, I wish now I hadn’t heard it.” He grimaced.
“What I’m trying to say is, that’s a pretty sensitive part of a man’s body—a woman couldn’t understand the psychology of it, not completely. And Beau ... well, hell, just look at him. He’s a beautiful man. It’s made him a little crazy.”
“He is not crazy,” Rachel cried. Her teeth were chattering now and it made it difficult for her to talk. “Don’t say that about him—it’s not true and you know it. He is good and strong and brave!”
Til had started at the forcefulness of her words. Now he glanced at her quickly. “Rachel, don’t you understand? He can’t have kids. It’s tearing him apart, that he can’t even offer that to a woman. Is ... isn’t that important to somebody like you?”
“What is ‘somebody like me’?” She drew herself up, soaking wet and exhausted, the dark velvet of her eyes flashing. “I don’t know what you—and he—think of me, Til, but it must be something strange. Besides, the whole thing’s ridiculous,” she said impatiently. “I’m pregnant.”
She saw his eyes widen. For a moment Til stood absolutely still, then he said, “You’re kidding.”
“I certainly am not,” she shouted. The last of her reserves were wearing thin. “And the child is his. And if you’re going to tell me it couldn’t be, I will—I will—” She looked in the direction of the board resting against the tree. “I will pick up that thing and do something very violent to you. I swear to you Til, right now I’d probably hit you!”
He kept staring. Then, his voice quivering with something like laughter, he said, “Have you told him you’re pregnant?”
“Of course I have,” she said indignantly. “But I haven’t convinced him, obviously, or I wouldn’t be standing here freezing to death. Now tell me where I can find him.”
Wild Midnight Page 29