He shuffled to the spot where they kept the water bucket. It lay empty on its side. He rubbed his face. Hot. Hot all over. Where was everybody? Outside? One of them would get him a drink.
Stooping to crawl through the door sent his head spinning. He flattened himself against the floor and absorbed the coolness of the stone into his bare chest and cheek. When the dizziness passed, he grasped the bucket handle and squirmed outside on his belly.
Fire licked his shoulder blades and buttocks as he clambered to his feet. He gasped bursts of air in and out of his lungs. Nausea rose in a clog from his stomach to choke his throat and the inside of his nose. He threw up on himself, unwilling to test his balance by bending over.
A chill swept over him. He leaned against the cliff, soaked the morning’s soft heat into his palms and forearms, the side of his face, his heaving ribs. Finally his breathing calmed. It struck him that although his wounds burned, the torment from the last few days of feeling skinned alive had left. He remembered buddies in Nam screaming from stitches received with no pain relievers. Now he understood.
The shivers subsided, but a headache landed like a swarm of bees taking up residence inside his skull. He recognized the symptom. A dehydration headache. He had to have that water.
A glance over his shoulder located Betty, Eve, and Crystal. They were walking with their backs to him far down the beach, where the corner jutted into the ocean. They wouldn’t hear if he yelled.
He’d have to get the water himself.
Bracing with one hand against the cliffside, he crouched and picked up the water bucket. A wave of nausea swooped over him, but disappeared when he straightened.
He inhaled a deep breath. Atta boy, he could do this.
* * *
At the end of the beach, the women stopped to give Betty a rest. Crystal plopped down where the waves teased the shoreline. She squiggled her toes deeper and deeper into the wet sand. They’d get completely buried, and then a wave would come and dig them out and she had to start all over again. It was a contest. Her toes against the waves—sorta like her and Eve.
She just knew Eve was going to dig out what happened with Jake. Dig out the lie. Dig out the promise Crystal had made knowing she wasn’t going to keep it. And now she was going to get caught. She was the toes. Eve was the waves.
It was obvious what Eve was doing to catch her. First Eve asked Aunt Betty questions about places she’d traveled to and which places she liked best. Busy talk. Talk to give Crystal time to calm down. Time for Eve to set the trap. Crystal knew it as sure as if she’d watched Eve put the cheese on the mousetrap and pull the spring back.
Then, sure enough, Eve asked Crystal the same questions. Where had she been and what had she liked and why? The questions were little crumbs for the mouse to nibble to get it over to the trap. And just like the mouse, Crystal went after the crumbs, knowing what was happening, wanting with all her mousy heart to resist, but oh-so-wishing to please Eve that she couldn’t stop.
Eve stood and looked at Aunt Betty. “How about if Crystal comes with me to pick fruit for lunch?”
Crystal shivered. Eve had got her to the mousetrap and was pulling back the spring.
“That’s fine, as long as you help me to the cave so I can check on Jake.” And Aunt Betty was playing right along.
Would he still be on the floor where she’d left him?
They got to the cave. Between thinking about how she’d made Jake fall and how Eve was going to make her tell everything, Crystal scrambled as fast as she could up to the little plateau, and then on up toward the Japanese garden. Maybe she could think of a way to distract Eve’s attention. Fall, maybe, and act like she was hurt. But no, that would be another lie. She was through with lies. She just wanted to get away with this one so Eve wouldn’t despise her and never trust her again.
Crystal walked faster, but Eve stayed right beside her, talking and talking, all friendly-like. Crystal’s ears were so stuffed with the tears she held back that she could hardly hear the words. But this was the big cheese talk, all right—all this kindness to lead her straight into the trap. Then, snap! the spring would pop and she’d have to confess. She began to sniffle, just thinking about it.
Aunt Betty shouted their names, and she halted. Eve did, too, and they ran back to the cave. They stopped on top of the little plateau and peered down. Aunt Betty stood outside the cave entrance, yelling their names until she and Eve showed up. “Jake’s gone! He’s bleeding!” She pointed at the trench and began hobbling along it with her cane. “There’s a trail, see?”
“Stay there, Betty. Crystal and I will find him and bring him back.” Eve climbed down the plateau to the trench, but Crystal stayed where she was. She scoured the trench ahead of her aunt until she saw Jake at the very end.
“There he is!” He was lying like a big crooked X in the long grass. “Jake! Jake!” She plunged down the plateau and ran toward him, screaming his name.
Eve ran ahead of her, but suddenly froze in a dead halt. Fear closed Crystal’s throat. She caught up with Eve and stopped too. She couldn’t move. All she could do was stare.
Jake lay on his stomach. One arm was crooked over his face; the other was stretched out beside him, fingers clasping the bucket handle. Swarming over him was a mass of huge, blue-green, metallic-colored blowflies. They were packed in heavy clumps over the stitches on his back. Crystal gasped when she saw flies crawling in and out of Jake’s nose and mouth.
One tiny, little lie, and this is where it led.
Chapter 41
For sure, Jake was dead.
Horror crawled over Crystal’s insides like the blowflies crawling over Jake’s outside. She should help him, but her feet wouldn’t move. At a gasp behind her, she turned numbly to observe Aunt Betty hobbling up to them. Her aunt’s eyes bugged out, and her mouth and nostrils flared wide as the air swooped into her lungs.
“Get those flies off him!” Aunt Betty shoved her and Eve aside and rushed toward the still figure. She flailed her cane in heavy arcs over him until the flies rose like a swirling tornado to envelop her.
Crystal and Eve broke out of their stupor and ran to her rescue. They pulled her back until the angry horde returned to its feast.
Aunt Betty refused defeat. “Check his pulse!” she yelled to Eve. “Crystal, fast as you can, bring a bucket of water!”
Crystal grabbed the bucket and ran for the stream. She looked back once and saw Eve crouched beside Jake’s head. Her aunt was attacking the horde again. This time the flies looked like they were losing.
Filling the bucket was her daily job and she had learned how to do it efficiently. Still, the stream was shallow, and filling the big bucket even halfway took time. She splashed water into it to hurry the process. She had to get back. Maybe Jake really wasn’t dead.
She began to pray for him, then stopped. God wasn’t going to listen to her! This whole thing was her fault. Jake would still be asleep on his ledge if it weren’t for her. She had woken him up, and if Jake were dead, then clearly it was because of her.
The knowledge squeezed the life out of her budding soul. She understood she hadn’t done anything to deserve her father’s abandonment and her mother’s death. But Jake, that was different. If he died, if she was guilty of his death, then she deserved to lose God.
She steeled herself against the reality awaiting her in the trench. Everything inside her became quiet. The breath in her lungs ceased. Her heart didn’t beat. Though she moved on the outside, on the inside she either lived with Jake or she died with Jake. Her guilt could bear nothing less.
* * *
Eve scooted back from checking Jake’s pulse as Betty splashed water from the bucket again and again over his back. The flies rose in a dark mass and attacked Betty, but she merely squinted her eyes against their assault and kept pouring. Jake didn’t flinch under the impact of the water on his raw sores, but when she splashed water onto his face, he groaned. Next to her, Crystal drew in a sharp breath.
With a pang, Eve realized Crystal, too, had feared him dead. A fear that had sunk sharp teeth into Eve’s heart and brought up all kinds of unsuspected feelings for Jake. Feelings that said he meant far more to her than she had imagined. Her head still whirled in confusion. She shoved the emotions aside and reached for Crystal’s hand. It was cold and limp. “He’s going to be okay, sweetie.”
Crystal said nothing.
“C’mon, let’s get him out of here.” She got Crystal to help her take Jake’s arms and pull his chest onto Eve’s back, then hoist him higher so she could bend forward and carry him turtle-back. The flies now struck at her. They batted against her eyes and every inch of exposed skin, buzzing in her ears with the high shrill of a dentist’s drill.
“Lead the way,” she shouted at Crystal. Clutching Jake’s arms to her chest, she staggered forward, eyes slitted against the dive-bombers. At the cave entrance, while Betty and Crystal warded off the flies, she dragged poor Jake inside on his stomach. It took all three of them to heave him from the floor onto the table.
“Quick, more water.” Betty sent Crystal skedaddling with the bucket.
Swatting away the flies that rode Jake in, Eve examined his injuries. “Hard to tell with all this dirt, but his stitches look okay.”
“You can bet those flies laid eggs in them.” Betty growled. “However many buckets it takes, we’re going to clean them out.”
It took three buckets before Betty was satisfied. Jake was shivering by the time they tucked him away on his ledge. Eve piled coals into the small pot and placed it as close to him as she dared to warm him up.
The coolness of the cave fought her efforts. She rubbed his arms and legs to stimulate his circulation. A lump lodged in her throat. Come on, Jake, don’t scare me again. Fear rocked her a second time, harder than it had in the trench. Please, Jake. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. Of living without him.
When at last his skin warmed and his teeth stopped chattering, she left him to Betty’s care and hustled to get fruit before dusk arrived. The venison soup they would have eaten for supper was peppered with blowflies. Nobody commented about insects in their food anymore. They simply spooned them out. But this was too over-the-top to stomach.
She made the trip a quick pick—whatever looked ripe, whatever was within easy reach. Her nerves still crawled from the sight of Jake covered with flies, lying in the trench like an abandoned corpse.
Jake dead—the possibility shredded her. Left her insides dull and jumbled, like the island in the gray morning after a typhoon. All the toughness she’d hammered into her brain over a lifetime was now mush. The carefully guarded soft spots in her heart were in disaray. She was no longer clear as to how she felt toward whom and what.
Jake. Her breath dammed her lungs so she couldn’t breathe. Believing him dead had blasted the ramparts protecting her heart. Had flung hidden feelings sky-high. Feelings freed, revealing themselves warm and tender toward this man.
They frightened her.
What was happening? The air locked up in her lungs shuddered out. All she knew for sure was that she wanted to hurry back. Not to Chicago. Not to a new Romero trial. But to the cave.
To Jake.
* * *
When she returned, Betty sank into a chair next to her at the table, clutching a damp wad of Jake’s shirt. “He’s got a high fever. We should take turns watching him tonight.” Her voice trembled. “He was delirious while you were gone.”
Eve gave her a quick hug, as much for her own fear as Betty’s. “Let’s eat and I’ll take the first watch. You get some rest.” There was no way she’d sleep if Jake needed tending.
Crystal hardly touched her food.
“You all right?” Eve placed her hand on Crystal’s. There was no response. No turning of the wrist to clasp Eve’s palm, no entwining of slender, little fingers with Eve’s.
The child shook her head.
“He’ll be okay.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I keep meaning it. You want to keep watch with me awhile?”
She was surprised when Crystal declined. “I just want to go to bed.”
“Me too.” Betty leaned heavily on the table and stood. She pointed to the small pot of water. “I’m using his shirt to mop off his brow and keep him cool. You can check him for fever anytime.”
Eve followed their shuffling footsteps into the dark, sleeping corridor. Betty grunted as she did every night when Crystal helped her onto her ledge. A soft rustle identified Crystal’s climb into her own bed. “Good-night, darling,” Betty called. Crystal’s response was faint.
Jake was lying on his side. Was he awake? She leaned over him, her heartbeat quickening. His breath warmed her cheek, and she jumped back, startled by how close she’d come to him. The second piece of shirt lay in a tidy bundle over his brow. She scooped it off and replaced it with the cooler cloth from the pot.
At her touch, he opened his eyes. “Water.” His voice rasped like parched reeds in a sea breeze. Alarm seized her breath and held it. He’d been in pain the last three days from the stitches, but not weak like this. Crystal’s fear seeped into her bones. What if he did die? What if she were wrong that he’d be okay?
With trembling hands, she fetched a coconut shell of water and slid her hand under his head to help him take small sips. It reminded her of her first conscious moments on the island, when Jake had fed her drops of coconut juice after rescuing her from the sea. He’d done everything he’d promised, hadn’t he? Found them water, food, shelter. Made her moccasins, saved her how many times? She owed him everything, and all she’d ever done was give him a hard time, gone her own way.
Betty was right that first day of their trip up the island, when the two of them had argued about Jake. Eve inhaled a slow breath, ready now to accept the truth of Betty’s words. Ready to admit what she’d so vehemently denied back then.
She lowered her face to Jake’s ear. “You’re a good man, Jake.” She jerked in a second breath. May as well own up to all of it. “We—all of us—love you.”
* * *
In the middle of the night, Jake’s cries startled Eve out of a doze. She pulled herself to a wobbly stand from the chair she’d placed next to his ledge.
“Ginny! I can’t find you!”
Pain daggered her heart. He wanted Ginny. Of course he would . . .
Her fingers confirmed what the darkness obscured. Sweat soaked his hair and beard and pooled beneath his chin onto the bed. She ran to change the cloth slipping off his forehead. “Shh now, you’re okay.” His face and arms and chest steamed with heat. She brought the pot over and used both cloths to cool him. The bony corrugation of his ribs beneath the damp cloth brought tears to her eyes. He had paid a heavy price to care for her and Betty and Crystal. An unaccustomed tenderness swept through her.
“Ginny!” He grabbed away a cloth and pressed her empty hand to his mouth. His lips were chapped in ragged furrows that scraped the soft inner circle of her palm. For a second, she yielded to the heady tingle of intimacy that coursed up her arm and pushed the breath from her throat. His grip tightened.
No!
She jerked her hand away. What was she doing? Shame at her response to his touch—a touch meant for Ginny—clamped her throat and rocketed heat up her neck to her cheeks. This was wrong, totally wrong.
It was her fault that Jake was here. Her fault that Ginny wasn’t.
Cold fingers seized her arm, and she jumped. Betty stood next to her. “Eve, are you all right?”
It took a moment to realize what Betty was referring to. She was crying. Shoulders shaking. Chest heaving. Muffled sobs pushing through her nostrils. She opened her mouth and sucked in little chokes of air. “I—” She didn’t know what to say. “He’s calling for Ginny.”
Betty slipped an arm around Eve’s waist. “He did this afternoon too. Poor guy, he loved her so much. It will take a long time for him to move on.”
The tears wouldn’t stop. “You were right al
l those months ago, Betty. He is a good man. I never met . . . never thought . . .” She struggled to untangle her thoughts, to speak words that made sense. “Jake has been nothing but good to me, and I’ve been so . . . so—”
“Blind?” Betty offered. “Belligerent? Ungrateful? Stupid?”
Despair suffused her at the ease with which Betty summoned the gruff words. She collapsed into the chair and covered her face with her hands. She should be the one dying.
Betty put her arm around Eve’s shoulder and pulled her into a bony hug. “Those are harsh words, dearie, but you know, I thank God for you. You jumped right off that lighter and swam out to Crystal and me and dragged us to safety. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. And look how you sewed Jake up and saved him from bleeding to death. Every day you go out of your way to help make Crystal and me comfortable and happy.”
“But not Jake.”
“You’ve been hard on him, no question about it. But now that you see the good in him, all that will change. Every day can be a new day in which you bless him just like you have Crystal and me.”
Bless? She recoiled at the religious word. All right, bless, then—she’d do her best to make him happy. A sigh heaved from her chest. At least the word gave her a handle on how to swoop up and manage all those wild emotions that had leaped out when she thought Jake was dead.
“Ginny!” Jake’s cry brought her to her feet.
Betty shot her palm to his forehead. “We’ve got to bring this fever down or . . .”
Eve gulped, finishing the sentence. Or they’d lose him. She dunked both cloths into the water and thrust one at Betty. They mopped his head, his chest, his limbs. Her hands and arms shook.
How could it be that she’d finally found a good man—maybe the only one to ever walk into her life—and now she might lose him forever?
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