by Paul Gallico
CHAPTER XIX
'You Can't Win 'Em All'
In the light of the lanterns, blood flowed blackly from the breast of the doll-like figure, curved backwards as though thrown haphazardly away. Some of the members of the party entertained the most shaming thoughts.
Nonnie whispered spitefully, 'Serves her right, always at everyone!'
Muller said, 'Hush! You mustn't say that about the poor creature.'
Nonnie was instantly contrite and cried, 'I shouldn't have. How rotten of me.'
But Muller was having a struggle of his own, for the ridiculous phrase that kept intruding itself into his own mind, It couldn't have happened to a better person.
Miss Kinsale was thinking, She was stupid, stupid, stupid. She didn't obey Dr Scott.
Martin was saying over and over to himself, 'Don't think ill of the dead . . .'
Belle asked, 'What happened?'
Her husband replied, 'She fell. Linda Rogo. I think she's dead.'
Belle said, 'The poor kid!' but she thought, It's God's punishment.
Susan was wondering whether the heart within her had turned to stone, that in the face of this swift and terrible death she could feel no emotion whatsoever.
Shelby said, 'The foolish girl. It was her own fault,' but he did not dare look at his wife whose face, staring down at the corpse was hard and unfathomable. Jane was wishing it had been herself. Linda did not deserve the peace of extinction.
Rogo was at first too stunned to shift from his hold at the foot of the overhang. Not yet suffering the shock of the full reality of what had taken place, he was asking himself, 'Now what did she have to go and do that for?' But then he gave a cry, 'Linda! Jesus Christ, Linda!' and was taking a step forward on to the treacherous plank, when he was halted by Scott's voice.
'The guide-line, Rogo! Go down on the guide-line. I'll join you.'
The counsel penetrated. The detective seized the rope and slid down, bumping and bouncing off the sharp projections, cutting himself and burning the palms of his hands.
He had hardly arrived at the steel wall and the narrow ledge they had used to circumvent it, when Scott was beside him.
She lay, bent like a bow, legs and arms limp, her head with the curls falling away from her white forehead, the dark blood still welling forth from her torn heart. There was no glimmer of any life whatsoever in the staring blue eyes. The lips of the cupid's bow mouth were stilt parted from the framing of her last words.
Rogo, who had seen death in every form, was weeping. He didn't touch her, as though to do so might hurt her more, fix her more firmly on to the sharp point. He asked, 'Why did she call me that before she died? I caught her but I couldn't hold her. My hands were slippery with oil. Are you sure she's dead?'
'Let me see,' Scott crowded past him. He did not touch her either, for there was no need. He stood looking down at the dead form of the girl, and although Rogo did not notice it, his face was suddenly distorted as with anger. 'She's beyond help.'
Rogo said, 'She called me a son-of-a-bitch! She never wanted to come on this goddam trip. I made her. That musta been what she meant, wasn't it? She couldn'a thought I let go of her on purpose?'
'No,' Scott said. 'She ought not have thought that.'
'Say a prayer for her soul, padre,' Rogo asked and suddenly self-conscious that he, a Catholic, was asking a non-Catholic, added, 'Any kind of a prayer.'
He waited for the Minister to make the sign of the cross over her, but Scott did not do so. Instead, his face even more darkly suffused, he shouted aloft, 'What did You have to do that for? Why?'
Shelby called back down, 'What's that, Frank!'
Scott bawled, 'I wasn't speaking to you! Get out of the way and let my voice through.' And then he shouted, 'You! What need did You have for that poor creature? I'd have had them all safely up if You hadn't interfered!'
Rogo said, 'What the hell kind of a prayer is that?'
'What am I supposed to pray?' cried Scott, 'God save a soul snatched from her in another senseless killing?'
Rogo stared at him. 'What are you, looney? If you can't, let me.'
'I'm sorry,' Scott replied. He seemed to be in a daze. 'We'll pray together. God rest the soul of this woman and let her come unto Thee. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.'
Rogo repeated it. Then he said, 'We got to get her up.'
'Where? What for?'
Rogo's nerves were beginning to crack, 'Where . . . where? Where the hell do you think? Up there with us.'
'How will you do it?'
'Carry her, drag her, pull her. Whatdya wanna do, leave her spitted down here like a piece of meat? How'd I ever be able to shut my eyes again without seeing her?'
'Or your ears,' said Scott.
'You bastard!' Rogo said levelly, his little eyes glaring malevolently. 'For a guy who's supposed to be a minister you're the lousiest bastard I ever . . .'
'I'll carry her up,' Scott said.
Rogo stared at him, ' You will.'
'Yes, you're strong, but you're not a good enough climber.'
'How will you get her up?'
'We'll tie her on to my back.'
Rogo said half to himself, 'You'd do it, too.'
'Yes, I will, if that's what you want.'
'But you don't think we oughta.'
'Do you? All the way along we have had to abandon the dead, the crippled or the weak for the sake of the living, when there was nothing further we could do for them.'
Rogo spat out, 'Like you did that Limey and his girl. They weren't dead or crippled.'
'Would you have wanted to die for a drunk who didn't have the guts to look after himself, or the kid? Every minute we stay here may be the difference between life and death.'
Rogo's voice came as near to despair as he was capable. 'What did she have to die for?'
Scott's own voice rose almost to a shout, 'Nothing! Damn all! It's all wrong.'
'So you want me to leave her down here like she is?'
'It's up to you, Rogo.'
'Christ! What have you got inside you, anything?'
Scott looked from Rogo to the dead girl and then to Rogo again, and said sharply., 'This ship won't float forever. I've pledged myself to get us out before she goes. Godammit, man, make up your mind!'
Rogo had a sudden incongruous memory of a newsreel he had seen of Scott when he was a college boy, travelling some nine yards with four men clinging to him to butt over a fifth and cross a goal line, his forward progress never checked. Maybe that was the way to bang away at getting people to church or God, or heaven, or out of a stricken ship alive. And Rogo remembered that once this Minister had got up off his knees in the dining-saloon, his forward progress had not been stopped either. True, fat old Belle Rosen had had to come to their rescue but the fact remained that she had, almost as though ordained. There was no single thing that Mike Rogo liked about the Reverend Frank Scott, but the guy had something. He was a winner.
The detective himself was a loner in courage, action and sheer guts, but he knew a leader when he saw one. Whether or not he was a homo, this guy had the power to rally. 'Okay,' he said nodding his head in the direction of the climb that faced them both, 'Let's go.'
As he watched Scott turning and edging around the wall again, finding the now familiar foot and handholds to begin the ascent, Rogo thought that something was suddenly missing from him; some bounce, some drive. His progress was slower, almost as though his back had been burdened with the dead girl. The detective wondered whether Scott had gone first on purpose to leave him alone for a moment with what remained of Linda, or whether he just did not care and was letting Rogo find his way back up as best he could.
He turned for a last look at his wife. He had seen too many dead to be shocked by death itself, or the violence that can be done to the human body to turn it into the technical name of corpse. The sadness in him that was causing the tears to continue to flow was something else, and it found expression at last in the words he addressed to the tor
n doll with its extruded sawdust soiling its body, 'Honeybun, if you only had knowed what a son-of-a-bitch I ain't bin . . .'
Then he, too, recommenced the arduous climb to rejoin the others.
The survivors were strung out precariously, lying face down upon the height they had conquered, a narrow reversed catwalk above the propeller shaft. Suspended in the gloom over the chasm of that bottomless lake of oil and sea water below, they were so exhausted that their limbs trembled uncontrollably and because they had all hated, despised or loathed Linda in one way or another, their nerves and emotions were further harrowed by guilt feelings.
None of them dared look at Rogo. Scott's light passing over his face for a moment showed it as blankly expressionless as ever. If he knew or suspected their feelings in connection with the death of his wife, he gave no sign. He said, 'What next? Do you know what you're doing, or where we're going?'
Scott replied, 'Across to the other side. There's a platform there on which we can get our breath.'
Shelby cried, 'We can't cross in this condition, Frank. Can't you see that we're all at the end of our strength? We've got nothing left. You'd lose the rest of us.'
To their surprise for the first time Scott answered sharply, 'Cut out feeling sorry for yourself, Dick. You've only come part of the way. You're not home yet. We can't not cross. You can congratulate yourself when you get there. Right now this is no place to stop.'
Whether it was Shelby's accusing, ' You'd lose the rest of us,' or the accumulation of the missing boy and the death of Linda, a change had come over Scott. He was angry. He had lost that serenity that had characterized his decisions, his manner of tackling what seemed like insurmountable obstacles. Yet that, too, seemed to have its values. For as simultaneously he robbed them of their sense of achievement, of having made this perilous ascent and gained an objective, he whipped them up to tackle another.
He knew that they were all thinking of what lay beneath them, the pit and the fallen girl, and were remembering how wickedly the surface of that lake had mirrored their lanterns and torches. He said, 'It's not strength you need, but willpower. If you knew there was a floor six inches beneath you, you'd walk across that thing blindfold. Well, I'm telling you there is a floor beneath you. Think it; believe it and nothing can happen to you. I'll take each of you across in turn.'
He did it then, unwaveringly. He had the balance and total fearlessness of a professional steelworker on a girder sixty storeys above the ground. To a man who had spent a night in howling gale, sleet and snow on a six-foot rock ledge on the side of an Andean mountain, with a sheer drop of seven thousand feet below, there was nothing for him to fear. One after the other he lifted them to their feet, placed his two hands on either side of their shoulders, the beam from the lantern strapped to his back lighting up the steel of the catwalk, and marched them across; the men and the women. To prevent them from slipping, he said to each one, 'Don't try to walk. Just slide your feet. Look straight ahead. Once you're on the other side, the worst is over.'
He had them hypnotized; they went like sleep walkers, unable any longer to think of what lay below. Their minds were on the beckoning haven and the words he had connected with the broad platform: 'Safe', 'rest', 'worst will be over'.
To Miss Kinsale he said, 'You're a great girl'; to Susan, 'You're going to grow into a fine woman, like your mother,' and she thought to herself: Will I? Will what I shall never be able to forget make me a better or worse person?
Jane Shelby said, 'I'd rather you wouldn't touch me. I can go by myself. I'm not afraid.'
Scott placed his steadying hands to her shoulders. 'Jane, Jane!' he whispered. They set off and she was glad of the strong touch, though it did not assuage her bitterness. Staring straight ahead as he had bidden her, she said, 'You promised me my boy.'
He answered, 'It isn't over yet. We don't know what yet lies in store for us, except that we shall meet it like men and women.'
Into Belle Rosen's ear Scott murmured, 'The W.S.A. was never like this.'
'Oh, my God!' she cried. 'Don't make me laugh now. You're a terrible man, Dr Scott, to make me do the things I done. I never would believe it.'
Kemal went over by himself. Scott walked Manny, Nonnie and Muller across and then went back for Rogo. The detective was standing up on the narrow walk in the dark and Scott heard the click of his lantern snap on and saw the shaft of light directed downwards. 'Don't look there again,' he said.
Rogo paid no attention to the advice. His batteries were fading. His light now could hardly illuminate where the body hung impaled upon the silvery steel sliver.
'Put your light on her,' Rogo ordered harshly.
Scott obeyed and sent the brighter shaft of his own heavy lantern cutting into the gloom. It picked up detail; the blood that showed up so dark, the drained white face and staring eyes. Rogo asked, 'What was the idea? What for? Why did she have to go?'
Scott did not reply and Rogo felt his gorge rising in anger. He wanted an answer -- something. There had to be one. Even if it was something foolish and futile like 'God's will', that was always being rattled at them by Father Maloney of the Broadway Tabernacle, when things went wrong: when Linda had lost the child she was going to have, or Rogo got into trouble for stepping on the corns of a new big-shot New York politician. 'God's will, my son. Have faith and pray for understanding.' A distraction, a crutch, anything! This guy was a minister, and stood staring down at the corpse of his wife with not a single thing to say?
Eventually Scott did speak and this time there was something almost mechanical in his reply, as though what he said differed from what he was thinking or feeling. He muttered first, 'I don't know,' and then added, 'It was probably mercifully swift. She didn't suffer.'
Rogo said, 'She suffered death. Violent death hurts. When you see the faces of those that get it, you know.'
'Yes,' said Scott, 'I guess perhaps you do.'
'Go ahead,' Rogo said to Scott, 'I'll follow you. I can see okay.'
The Minister lit his way across to the others. Rogo found that he could think of nothing to say, but, 'God rest her soul,' even as he wondered what had become of that tortured thing. Had it already taken flight from that Purgatory to penetrate the iron hull above them and rise through the firmament to the angels? A vision passed through his mind for a moment to be rejected: Christ with the bleeding heart, golden saints with pearly halos, God on a cloud, majestic, bearded, and chromo-coloured. Holy pictures.
Heaven, or whatever 'up' was, consisted of a belt of gas, a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen surrounding the earth, and above that was space through which the stars and the planets travelled aimlessly and endlessly to some mysterious and inexplicable design.
Rogo knew that he had never been much better than a half-ass Catholic, going to Mass, kneeling, genuflecting, dipping into Holy water, giving lip service to responses, while other things would come floating up in his mind, things that had no business in church, such as sometimes the two men he had shot in a gun duel at the corner of 6th Avenue and 47th Street, amidst an after-theatre, home-going crowd, killers who had drawn to shoot it out with him. In church, amidst the music and the incense, the carved, wooden saints and the stained-glass windows, he would see again how the neon sign of a restaurant had turned the nickel-plated pistol of one of them a glowing red. Rogo had fired two shots for their one, and that had finished it, with never another person or innocent bystander injured. He had looked down at the bodies sprawled on their backs upon the pavement and the clay-grey faces unstained, since he had shot them through the heart, and thought to himself: Dead is dead . And it could have been the other way around, with curious spectators gaping at the remains of Rogo, and that would have been that and no resurrection. The hole through his natty fedora hat had been sufficient to corroborate this.
So he said, 'God rest her soul,' once more and supposed what he meant was that he hoped that whatever was left of her would not be compelled to endure the agony of what her living had seemed to be like, that
if nothing else, she would be allowed oblivion. Then withdrawing the shaft of light from the depths and focusing upon the steel pathway, he coolly walked across and joined the others.
'Rest,' Scott ordered and they flopped down upon the platform where they were, with the exception of Shelby and the Minister.
The former asked, 'Where are we?'
Scott trained an examining finger of light to the four quarters, then to one side where something jutted out that looked like a gigantic cup, ten feet across and at least five feet deep. He asked Shelby, 'What does that look like to you?'
The motors man replied, 'Probably the turbine housing, half broken away. You can see the bolts up above where it was fastened.'