Jim grimaced. He thought a moment, his eyes focused on Fred's hand, loosely gripping his own makeshift pole. He said, "I assumed you had one for me, Fred. In the boat."
Fred started walking again, a little faster. "No, I don't, Jim. Did I tell you I did? You'll have to make one." He moved his hand slightly to indicate several thin birch trees a dozen yards to the right. "That's a good bet," he went on, and quickened his pace even more. Jim stopped. Fred called back, "I'll wait for you in the boat, Jimbo." Jim watched him lope off. He thought he heard him giggle—a high, quick, grating sound, a child's giggle—then grimaced again. That giggle sounded ludicrous from a man like Fred Williams.
Jim moved slowly and carefully to his right, toward the cluster of birches.
Fred Williams would admit freely that he was a chauvinist and a bully. He would also go on to explain that because of this "self-honesty," he was "infinitely more at peace with himself" than other men.
He pushed his way through life like a bear, and anyone standing in his way usually got eaten. Slowly.
Like Jim Hart.
Fred mused that now he was probably just chewing on Jim Hart. In a day or so—when the hike ended—he would finish with him. It was what Jim needed. If Jim could be made to see himself as the candy-ass that everyone knew he was, then he'd be well on his way to becoming a much happier man.
So, Fred thought, there was therapy and goodness in chewing Jim up. Which was not to deny, of course, that it was also lots of fun. It was a man's right—and duty—to dominate other men if he could. The strong survived. The strong had to survive.
He stopped walking, leaned over, and set his pole in the little rowboat. He glanced around. Jim was nowhere in sight. He pushed the boat into the water, jumped in, and grabbed the oars. "Hey, Jimbo!" he called, and he rowed mightily toward the middle of the lake, where the water was deepest, and the chances for catching breakfast for all of them the best. "Hey Jimbo, it's okay!" He heard himself chuckle low in his throat.
He had seated himself in the middle of the boat; the bow was behind him. He saw Jim appear on shore, now about fifty yards away. He had a six-foot length of birch branch in hand, and a look of puzzlement on his face. It was a look that made Fred feel good. "Sorry, Jimbo," he called.
He noticed that the boat was moving very sluggishly, and that it was riding much lower in the water than it should have been. He saw Jim point at the boat. He heard Jim call, "Who's . . ." and a sudden breeze carried the rest of the sentence away.
"What'd you say, Jimbo?" Fred called. He saw Jim's mouth move, but because the breeze had sustained itself, and the distance to shore had increased to nearly a hundred yards, he heard nothing.
"Goddammit!" Fred swore, because the boat was moving so sluggishly—as if the water had suddenly become much more dense than water ought to be—and he had no good explanation for it.
"Fred!" he heard, very faintly, from shore. He looked. Marie was standing next to Jim; she had her hands cupped around her mouth. "Fred!" he heard again. And he saw her point frantically. At him, he thought. Then he corrected himself. No—not at him, at the front of the boat. She was pointing at something in the front of the boat.
He turned his head a little. He noticed first that the boat was angled slightly downward, toward the bow. He turned his head some more. He felt a chill go down his spine, and grinned as if in denial of it.
He saw the man in the bow seat for only an instant. He was tall, dark-skinned, dark-haired, blue-eyed, and he was naked.
"Welcome," the man said, "to my island."
And he leaped from the boat before Fred could get a word out. "What in the . . ." Fred murmured, then peered over the side of the boat. He lifted the oars from the water; a few bubbles undulated to the surface, where the man had jumped in. "What in the Christ–" Fred said. And the water grew still.
Chapter 5
In the Bronx
Georgie MacPhail was intrigued by the back room, just as any normally curious boy his age would have been intrigued. The room was kept locked most of the time, which had naturally piqued his interest (not that the lock prevented him from getting in; at twelve years old, he was an accomplished cat burglar—a skill his mother and three younger brothers depended on), and the fact that the building's janitor, Mr. Baum, had told him repeatedly to stay out of the room made it imperative that Georgie know everything there was to know about it.
He knew, for instance, that Mrs. Wain's parakeet was in the room, under a ten-year-old copy of the Daily News, though the bird was now just a pathetic pile of feathers and bones. Georgie had almost told Mrs. Wain about it, because it was sad, really, seeing her stick her head out her window twice a day (in the middle of the morning, and in the middle of the afternoon) and yell, "Peepers, here Peepers!" still expecting after three years that the bird was going to come back to her.
And he knew, also, that the back room was where the janitor kept his magazines. Georgie had never found the magazines, though he'd looked. He had seen the janitor slip quickly and quietly into the room and, five minutes later, slip quickly out, his movements a little stiff. Georgie had told his mother about the janitor's magazines, and his mother had said that the janitor was "entitled to his pleasures, Georgie, like everyone else." Georgie thought that was a nice way to think.
And he knew also about the ghost that lived in the room. He had never been sure what kind of ghost it was—whether it was a man or a woman—because he had never been able to talk to it, or get a good look at it. He knew only that it liked the two dark back corners a lot, and that it went from one corner to the other according to its mood. Usually, if it was raining outside, it would stay in the southwest corner and shiver quite a bit. Otherwise, it seemed to like the southeast corner. Occasionally, on very hot days, it stood very still right in the middle.
Georgie supposed at first that it was odd the ghost didn't scare him. Then he decided that it would be stupid to be afraid of a thing that spent most of its time shivering in the darkest corners of the back room. When he realized this, he realized also that he felt sorry for the ghost, and he wished he could do something for it. Something to bring it happiness.
Georgie MacPhail was a nice kid—good-looking and intelligent—who loved his mother, cared for his brothers, and prayed nightly to a God he called "Sir." The fact that he was a cat burglar, and would probably remain a cat burglar for the rest of his life, had nothing to do with Georgie himself. It was merely the road he had been forced by circumstance to walk on. He was no more to blame for it than he was to blame for the color of his hair—brown—or his shoe size, or his left-handedness.
Chapter 6
"Son of a bitch!" Fred Williams breathed. He took a long drink of the strong, lukewarm black coffee Marie had made for him. He shook his head briskly. "Son of a bitch!" he repeated.
Marie asked, "'Welcome to my island'?" And she grinned slightly, despite her brother's obvious discomfort. "Is that all that man said?"
Jim Hart interrupted, "I thought this was your island, Marie."
She looked up at him. She was seated, with Fred, at the small kitchen table. Jim was near the door; it was closed. "It is our island, Jim." She pulled out the chair catty-corner to her and nodded at it. "Come sit down, Jim. You're making me nervous."
He came over immediately and sat down.
"It sure as hell is our island!" Fred grumbled. He took another drink of the coffee. He wished fervently that they'd had the good sense to bring a bottle along. "And it's been our island from the damned Day One!" He jabbed the table with his forefinger. "The goddamned Day One, limbo!" He lifted his coffee cup and saw that it was empty. "Get me some more coffee, Marie."
Marie's eyebrows shot up in annoyance. "Sure enough, Fred." She stood and went to the stove with the cup.
Jim asked, "What was he talking about, then?"
Marie said, "A fly got in the coffee, Fred. Do you mind?"
"Why should I mind? Fish it out."
"It's raining again," she said. She was lo
oking out a small window to the left and above the stove.
"Shit," Fred muttered, "that's all we need . . ." He listened as the rain began pelting the roof of the house.
"What do you think he was talking about?" Jim repeated.
Fred ignored the question. "We'll never get out of here! Jesus, I've got orders to fill—"
"He could be a squatter," Jim offered.
"A what?"
"A squatter."
And Marie said, her voice trembling, "He's out there. I can see him. He's out there!"
Fred and Jim looked over at her in unison. There was a short silence; then Fred pushed himself quickly, as if with great urgency, to his feet—the chair clattered backward to the floor. "What's he doing?" he said as he crossed to the stove. "Is he flashing you? If he's flashing you, I'll . . ."
"He's gone," Marie said. And Fred peered out the window. He saw the rain. It was falling straight down and it was heavy and gray against the backdrop of gray sky. He thought he saw a quick whisper of movement near a lone birch tree twenty feet from the house. "I'm going outside, Marie."
Marie said nothing. She watched him fetch his jacket from the back of his chair.
"I'll come with you," Jim said, though with little conviction.
Surprising him, Fred said, "Sure. Why don'tcha?! Two's better than one."
Marie smiled to herself as she listened to them shuffling about on the porch, obviously hoping the rain would stop abruptly. Fred and Jim—it was a strange and unlikely twosome.
She tried not to imagine what Fred would do if he found, the trespasser, but there were too many other situations, past situations, to look back on, so she couldn't help but see Fred, in her mind's eye, working the guy over very thoroughly. And thoroughly enjoying every second of it.
She thought that Jim would raise, a feeble protest; Fred would scowl at him, and grinningly invite him to join in the beating; "Be really good for you, Jimbo!" . . . "Teach you something about survival, Jimbo!" . . .
She took a sip of Fred's coffee (there had been no fly in it—that had merely been a feeble attempt at rattling him, a fact he had seemed to guess right away. Christ, if only he wasn't always so damned . . . aware of things!).
Unlike most of his kind, the creature had grown into adulthood. There were just a dozen or so others like him, all over the planet, including the female with him now. They were beings for whom the normal laws of change and evolution had been revoked, or at least altered. What would otherwise have taken eons, now took only decades.
Those who had cared for him, and had raised him, years ago—the ones he called "Grandpa," and "Grandma" —had given him a name, and he had kept it because the memories attached to it gave him pleasure. And pleasure in all its forms was one of the reasons he was alive (and he knew that when his life stopped giving him pleasure, he would gladly end it).
His name was Seth. It was a name he said often, in various voices and inflections, and in a number of the dialects he had heard through the years.
Seth.
When he said the name he often could see, in memory, the face of his Grandpa and the face of his Grandma; and it was delight he saw, and wonderment, and awe when at last they came to realize what he was, and where he had come from.
That was when he had taken them (and so, of course, they still lived—their blood was his blood, and their flesh his flesh; they had shared themselves with him—it was the perfect act of love).
Seth.
He was beautiful by any standards, because he was a creature that the earth had produced.
And the earth did not make mistakes.
Jim Hart said, "Why don't we forget it, Fred. I can't see a thing." The rain had strengthened until, now, it was deafening, and almost impenetrable.
But Fred hadn't heard him: He pointed to his left. "You look over there," he shouted, to be heard above the noise of the rain. He nodded to his right. "I'll go this way." And he grabbed Jim's arm and grinned maliciously, "If you find him, Jimbo, you just come and tell me. Okay?!"
Jim took hold of Fred's wrist and tried vainly to pull his hand away. Fred's grip strengthened. He repeated, "Okay?!"
"Okay," Jim said. Fred let go. Jim stepped off the porch. Within seconds, the rain soaked his clothes through to the skin and he whispered, with as much venom as he could muster, "Fuck you, Fred!" It gave him little comfort.
Chapter 7
In Utica, New York
Leonora Wingate (a name she despised because it sounded so damned cosmopolitan; she much preferred the nickname "Lenny") wasn't at all sure she was making the right move. After all, the job she'd had here—in the Utica Social Services Department, Child Welfare Division—was pretty secure, and the pay was good, the working conditions all right. Few women could really ask for much more.
She zipped up the brown vinyl two-suiter, and stared blankly at it a moment. Life is chances, she thought. She said it slowly, smilingly, as if to convince herself: "Life is chances."
The phone (rang, jarring her out of her reverie. She snatched it up from the bedside table. "Yes?" she said. It was the man from the moving company. Was everything all right? he wanted to know. Could his men come and pack things up, or was she having second thoughts again? She briskly assured him that she wasn't having second thoughts, and that she expected her belongings to be in her new apartment, in Manhattan, the following afternoon. That's our guarantee, Miss Wingate—next day delivery within 200 miles. And you got it, Miss Wingate. "Thank you," she said, and hung up.
Now, she realized, she had cemented her fate.
She lifted the two-suiter, began mentally cataloguing its contents—dress, suit, underwear, deodorant . . . She lowered her head suddenly. This is a mistake, she thought. This is a mistake! And without looking back she quickly left the apartment that had been her home for the last five year.
She felt lousy.
Chapter 8
Jim Hart tried to find shelter under one of the island's three maple trees, but it was a very old tree, and its foliage was sparse, so the rain was nearly as heavy under it as out in the open.
He leaned disconsolately against the tree and felt himself begin to shiver. He took a long, slow, deep breath; the shivering abated. "Stupid!" he said aloud. "Stupid shitass, stupid, damn!" When he became frustrated or angry, as he was now, he often swore in a rambling, inarticulate, and uncreative way. "Crap, fuck!" he added, his enunciation very crisp.
He heard something rustling about above him. He looked. The rain stung his eyes and he turned his head quickly away; another string of curses erupted from him.
He realized, as he cursed, that he had seen something very odd in the branches overhead. He looked again, shielding his eyes as best he could.
The tree was empty.
Marie was feeling very uncomfortable. Not with the house, or the chair she was sitting in, but with the mood that had settled over her. It itched, it felt prickly and hot, like a wool blanket on a summer day. And there was a feeling of claustrophobia, too, as if she were wrapped in a blanket (no, she corrected, as if someone else had wrapped her in one) cocoon style, and there was no way of freeing herself. It was a mood she had felt only once before, as a small child, and there had been a vague, unremembered threat attached to it, something she had to hide from.
But here, she thought, there was only the rain, of course, and a late summer chill which had settled into the house (and maybe that was causing her mood—the rain and the cold. But she knew immediately that that was not it. She knew that if she looked deep within herself she would see that she was on the verge of panic. And she knew that she could think of no good reason for it. She knew that, with only the very slightest provocation, she would scream).
Fred could feel his fists clenching and his teeth gritting and all his muscles going taut. He, like Jim, was soaked to the skin, but, unlike Jim, he was feeling vengeful, and it was keeping him warm.
He was moving carefully and quietly through the tall grass. His plan was to first make a careful searc
h of the perimeter of the island, and then to crisscross it. It was unlikely, he knew, that he'd catch the guy that way—he'd need a couple more good men to accomplish that—but at least the guy would be put on notice that he was not going to put up with any perverse fun and games here, on his island.
Jim had never been more exhausted than at this moment. He had stopped being angry and frustrated. The curses had ended. He merely wanted, ached, to be away from here. To be somewhere else, anywhere else, because all this . . . posturing—for Fred's sake, and Marie's sake, even for his own sake—was so terribly wearisome.
He was still leaning against the tree. He felt movement in it now, as if something inside—an actual part of the tree—had rolled over in its sleep. He dismissed it immediately.
It bothered Marie that she was talking to herself. She couldn't remember ever talking to herself before. She had seen others doing it, in New York City, although she supposed they talked to themselves for quite different reasons than she did, for reasons of insanity.
Her reason was fear.
She was glad that she'd finally admitted it. Now she could stop fighting it internally—she could relax a little. "Because, Fred, you see," she said to herself—her voice high-pitched, almost scolding—"you cannot go around doing that anymore." It was a speech she had practiced often. "It's not acceptable behavior. It'll get you into trouble. There are forces much stronger than men alone. Forces we created . . ." She trailed off. She wasn't listening to herself anymore; she was just mouthing the words out of a deep familiarity with them.
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