She almost fell from a violent blow to her calf. Dazed, she saw, speeding towards her, a dresser that seemed to be flying over the water. She flattened herself against the fence as the thing raced in front of her, contorting itself as though it wanted to avoid sinking.
She looked in Mrs. Clarys's direction. It wasn't that far. If she could take advantage of a lull in the waltz between the blocks of clay and the tree trunks, she should be able to make it across. But she knew that, because of all that clay, the ground would be extremely slippery. The rain had started to come down in full force again and she was now completely soaked from head to toe. If she hesitated again, she wouldn't be able to do a thing.
She pivoted to her right where the torrent was surging ahead, aimed her flashlight, and saw that, for the time being, it wasn't carrying anything dangerous along with it. She thrust herself forward, slid, got back up, skated across by lifting her arm in the air in order to regain some sort of balance. Blinded by the rain beating onto her, she swirled around and sank into mud, from which she extracted herself by a sudden burst of will that she never thought she had in her. Furiously, she straightened herself out, her hair plastered together by the clay that was cascading down her face but which she ferociously wiped off.
For one of the first times in her life, she swore out loud, striking the mud before leaning into it as a type of support until she finally wound up on the other side of the street and was able to advance by holding on to the trees or anything else she could grab on to. At last, she got to Mrs. Clarys's doorstep, where she pushed open the door and sprang up in front of the old lady, who looked at her with a smile on her face.
Mrs. Clarys had put on one of those rubber caps that sailors used to wear way back when. There she was standing calmly with her old-fashioned headgear, her feet firmly ensconced in some solid boots, her cane in hand.
"You're a stubborn one, my dear, you crossed over anyway,” she said sweetly.
She smiled back.
"I couldn't very well leave you here all alone."
"Indeed . . . and what are we going to do now? I have a feeling we've been abandoned."
"Yes,” she admitted simply. “Is there any way to gain access to your roof?"
The old lady looked at her.
"Do you want to hoist me up onto the roof?"
"Yes, if the water gets too high to huddle in the attic. If you'll give me a hand."
The old lady seemed deep in thought.
"I imagine that if I answered no to you, you still wouldn't leave me here, would you?"
"You've got that right."
"All right then, let's go,” she said. “Get the stepladder from the kitchen, put it there, in the hall.” She pointed with her flashlight. “That's where the trap is. Be careful, you won't be able to see much. I'll hold the flashlight for you."
She went to get the stepladder without even thinking about the violent blasts that were shaking the house at regular intervals, nor about how she intended to hoist Mrs. Clarys, who was practically paralyzed, up a ladder, then through the trapdoor that led to a tiny attic, and finally, if it came to that, get her onto a slanted roof covered with slippery shingles. It didn't seem possible, if they ended up on the roof, that she'd be able to maintain balance despite the cantankerous, insistent blasts of wind and rain that were lashing out in every possible direction.
She had neither the time nor the inclination to worry about all that.
She found the trapdoor and ordered the old lady to climb up the rickety stepladder . . . this little old lady who winced in pain and moaned throughout the inhuman effort but managed, nonetheless, to gain access to the attic, encouraged perhaps by the first muddy wave that had begun to inundate her dining room.
She supported and pushed her, and then climbed up into the attic herself. Hours later, when the water rose further, she succeeded in pulling and lifting the old lady all the way to the roof, where they both let themselves land. Exhausted, in pain, and thoroughly drenched, they hung on to each other like two shipwrecked passengers—grabbing each other when one of their feet started to slip or when the wind pushed them around in a rage at being thwarted by these two feeble creatures who, instead of losing all their strength and hope, infused each other with energy and determination as they connived against both the violence of the elements and the indifference of man.
* * * *
The man handed her a steaming cup.
"Drink this, it will warm you up."
She took it, her hand still trembling, but not from the cold. Mrs. Clarys was lying not too far from her, with a smile on her face. A man with a white coat was giving her an I.V.
"You were amazingly courageous, but you were really very lucky,” the man said.
She looked at him.
"Your husband thought you were dead,” he continued. “He was very worried when he didn't see you at the shelter. Some reporters would like to interview you. People want to know how you could have survived all night on top of that roof with a sick, elderly woman."
"I didn't do anything particularly extraordinary,” she said.
He grinned.
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Harvey Weintrop. I'm an environmentalist assigned to the mayor's office."
"Nice to meet you."
"No, I'm the one who's glad to meet you. I've been warning about the risks associated with that quarry, and your adventure proved I was right. Without your powerful will to live, we would have had two more deaths to mourn."
"There were deaths?"
"Sadly. People like you who were caught off guard by the sudden flooding, but who, unlike you, didn't try to climb to safety quickly enough."
"It was all thanks to Mrs. Clarys."
"Mrs. Clarys?"
"If she hadn't been there, I might not have acted."
"Well, it was all for the best, then. I'll let your husband know that you're safe and sound."
"Is he all right?"
"Yes, he wisely waited out the storm at his office before venturing back out."
The man got up and held out his hand.
"I'm sure you would rather see him before meeting with the reporters—"
"Mr. Weintrop, do me a favor, will you? Don't tell him you found me, he'll hear about it soon enough when my lawyer hands him the divorce papers."
"But, Mrs.—"
"When I was up there on the roof hanging on to Mrs. Clarys, I could see, from across the street, my family house being destroyed, and I decided not to rebuild it. At the same time, I thought about my life—so mediocre . . . so dull—and I decided to make a change."
"But your husband . . . ?"
"He's the worst part of all that mediocrity and dullness—and dangerous, too! What would you do if you were in my shoes, Mr. Weintrop?"
Copyright © 2010 by Maud Tabachnik; translation © 2010 by Peter Schulman
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Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen
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Though there are fewer single-author collections to consider for our annual short-story round-up, what's here is choice: a retrospective by a name from the past, plus volumes by several present-day masters.
**** Vera Caspary: The Murder in the Stork Club and Other Mysteries, Crippen & Landru, $19 trade paper, $29 hardcover. The author of Laura was one of the best slick-magazine mystery writers, as shown in four novellas, three from the wartime 1940s and one from 1968. A continuing theme is the exploitation and general mistreatment of women by the men they love. The title story makes excellent use of 1940s Manhattan's cafe society—celebrity name- dropping rampant—and the gathering-of-the-suspects finale is fun. “Stranger in the House,” about a woman unknowingly married to a Nazi spy, recalls such Hitchcock films as Sabotage and Notorious, while “Sugar and Spice” vividly depicts the Broadway theatrical scene. “Ruth” is an interesting variant on Francis Iles's Before the Fact, one of Caspary's favorite novels per editor A. B. Emrys’ excellent introduction.<
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**** S.J. Rozan: A Tale About a Tiger and Other Mysterious Events, Crippen & Landru, $17 trade paper, $42 limited hardcover. One of the best collections in recent memory uses a traditional private eye format in fresh and original ways. Lydia Chin and Bill Smith turn up in six of nine stories, twice together and twice each solo, while a seventh tale stars a Chinese-American sleuth specializing in art theft and forgery. The gambling tale “Passline” is an especially impressive piece of writing. The frequently anthologized “Hoops” first appeared in EQMM, the rest in original anthologies.
**** Joyce Carol Oates: Dear Husband, Ecco, $24.95. Family relationships are the unifying theme of fourteen stories from anthologies and literary magazines, reconfirming Oates's ability to capture characters who vary widely in age, gender, intellect, and social position, and to hold the reader's attention even through multi-page paragraphs, as in the title story, which fictionalizes Andrea Yates's murder of her children. Usually about crime in some way, some classifiable as mysteries, often recalling the dark visions of Poe, all the stories are compelling reading, none cheery or upbeat. “Mistrial” is an unusual account of jury duty, with a neat finishing twist, though librarians may cringe at the main character.
*** John Grisham: Ford County: Stories, Doubleday, $24. Seven longish shorts, all apparently new to print, are remarkably varied in mood and subject matter apart from their common Mississippi locale. All involve lawyers at least tangentially, all but one crime as usually understood. Tone ranges from pure farce and slapstick (the lead-off story “Blood Drive") to dark tragedy ("Fetching Raymond,” about the lead-up to an execution), backgrounds from an Indian casino to a nursing home. Grisham is highly variable—his novels range from entertaining schlock (The Client, The Runaway Jury) to substantial works (A Time to Kill, The Chamber)—but this gathering consolidates his position as a formidable popular storyteller. Of greatest interest purely as a crime story is “Fish Files,” about a small-time lawyer's plot to escape his mundane life.
*** Peter Robinson: The Price of Love and Other Stories, Morrow, $25.99. Two novellas about Yorkshire cop Alan Banks bookend this collection, “Going Back” new to American readers (first published in the British edition of his previous collection Not Safe After Dark) and “Like a Virgin” written for the present volume. They are extremely leisurely like Robinson's recent novels and overdo the musical references, but series fans won't complain. The ten short stories, two also concerning Banks, drawn mostly from original anthologies, are varied in style and approach and generally more impressive than the novellas. Particularly interesting is “Walking the Dog,” a subtle parody written for Toronto Noir.
*** John C. Boland: 30 Years in the Pulps: Stories of Mystery and Suspense, Perfect Crime / Outskirts, $14.95. Twenty-three stories (nine from EQMM, twelve from AHMM, two from Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine) range in date from 1976 to 2009. Boland is a consistent and versatile performer, always worth reading. Reviewing his first novel Easy Money in January 1992, I compared him to Dick Francis for his ability to capture specialized backgrounds, including in this book, art, theatre, post-Cold War espionage, veterinary medicine, and Wall Street, where the author is well known as a journalist and hedge-fund manager. (One quibble: EQMM and AHMM aren't pulp magazines.)
*** Charlaine Harris: A Touch of Dead, Ace, $23.95. Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic Louisiana waitress whose gift complicates her romantic life, is drawn to vampires because she cannot read their minds. Five stories, all from original anthologies, provide an enticing introduction to her world, much like our own (with numerous historical and brand-name references) apart from its inclusion and acceptance of werewolves, fairies, and other supernatural beings. Harris's crossing of mystery, romance, and fantasy genres, with a strong strain of humor, has won her an immense following in novels and an HBO television series. (Harris fans should also watch for a highly effective variation on a standard fantasy pre-mise, “Crossroads Bargain,” in the star-studded original anthology Delta Blues [Tyrus, $27.95 hardcover, $17.95 trade paper], edited by Carolyn Haines with a foreword by Morgan Freeman.)
** Ron Goulart: Playing Detective, Gryphon, $10. This 56-page chapbook introduces a divorced couple, Jack Branner and Connie Bowen, who play a husband-and-wife detecting team in movies and radio and find solving real-life murders a swell source of publicity. Set in World War II-era Hollywood, the two stories offer light-hearted fun in the mode of the author's Groucho Marx series. The title story, with a nice Queenian dying message, is the stronger one.
Ed Gorman has chosen 23 of his best stories (i.e., some of the best of recent decades by anybody) for The End of It All and Other Stories (Ramble House, $35 hardcover, $20 trade paper), most from the two volumes of The Collected Ed Gorman published in Britain in 2007, with three previously uncollected.
Two mixed collections are of criminous interest. Lewis Shiner's Collected Stories (Subterranean, $40) includes “Perfidia,” an excellent 2004 tale concerned in part with the World War II disappearance of bandleader Glenn mIller, and three solid cases from the 1980s for Austin private eye Dan Sloane. Richard A. Lupoff's fantasy and horror compilation Visions (Mythos, $40) leads off with four previously unpublished stories, three about Abraham ben Zaccheus, an early-20th-century San Francisco psychic detective based (per Peter S. Beagle's introduction) on the great short-story writer Avram Davidson, the fourth featuring Abraham's contemporary S.F. cop granddaughter Rebekkah. Though supernatural detection is not my usual cup of tea, Lupoff's style wins the day, particularly in the marvelous voice of Irish Watson character John O'Leary.
Among the original fishing mysteries in Hook, Line & Sinister (Countryman, $23.95) edited by T. Jefferson Parker, are “The Nymph,” a strong James M. Cain-ish tale set in 1954 by EQMM favorite Melodie Johnson Howe and Michael Connelly's “Blue on Black,” a typically neat puzzle for L.A. cop Harry Bosch.
It's That Time Again, Volume IV (BearManor, $19.95), edited by Jim Harmon, sets mystery short stories in the worlds of old radio shows. Editor Harmon takes Sherlock Holmes out West to collaborate with Tom Mix, and the presumably pseudonymous Dash-iell X. Doyle fashions a tale about the robbing of Jack Benny's vault. While some entries can be enjoyed without knowledge of the programs, I can't imagine what someone unfamiliar with Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, would make of Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.'s deadpan parody, which I found screamingly funny.
Copyright © 2010 Jon L. Breen
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Fiction: DAY FOR A PICNIC by Edward D. Hoch
When the Malice Domestic Convention convenes this year, they'll be honoring, in memoriam, Edward D. Hoch. The Malice convention is dedicated to furthering the traditional mystery, and no one created more mysteries in the classical vein, at short-story length, than Ed Hoch. Hewas the undisputed master of the fairlyclued whodunit, the “impossible crime” story, the “locked room” mystery. Many of his nearly 1,000 stories were series tales, but he wrote a large number of stand-alones, too. Here's a very early one....
I suppose I remember it better than the other, countless other, picnics of my childhood, and I suppose the reason for that is the murder. But perhaps this day in mid July would have stood out in my mind without the violence of sudden death. Perhaps it would have stood out simply because it was the first time I'd ever been out alone, without the ever-watchful eyes of my mother and father to protect me. True, my grandfather was watching over me that month while my parents vacationed in Europe, but he was more like a friend than a parent—a great old man with white hair and tobacco-stained teeth who never ceased the relating of fascinating tales of his own youth out West. There were stories of Indians and warfare, tales of violence in the youthful days of our nation, and at that tender age I was fully content in believing that my grandfather was old enough to have fought in all those wars, as he so claimed.
It was not the custom in the thirties, as it is today, for parents to take their children along when making their first tour of Europe, and so, as I've said, I was left behind in Gr
andfather's care. It was really a month of fun for me, because the life of a rural New York town is far different from the bustle of the city, even for a boy of nine or ten, and I was to spend endless days running barefoot along dusty roads in the company of boys who never—or hardly ever—viewed me strangely because of my city background. The days were sunny, with warmth, because it had been a warm summer even here on the shores of a cooling lake. Almost from the beginning of the month my grandfather had spoken with obvious relish of the approach of the annual picnic, and by mid month I was looking forward to it also, thinking that here would be a new opportunity for exploring the byways of the town and meeting other boys as wild and free as I myself felt. Then too, I never seemed to mind, at that time, the company of adults. They were good people, for the most part, and I viewed them with a proper amount of childish wonder.
There were no sidewalks in the town then, and nothing that you'd really call a street. The big touring cars and occasional late-model roadsters raised endless clouds of dust as they roared (seemingly, to a boy of ten) through the town at fantastic speeds unheard of in the city. This day especially, I remember the cars churning up the dust. I remember Grandfather getting ready for the picnic, preparing himself with great care because this was to be a political picnic and Grandfather was an important political figure in the little town.
I remember standing in the doorway of his bedroom (leaning, really, because boys of ten never stood when they could lean), watching him knot the black string tie that made him look so much like that man in the funny movies. For a long time I watched in silence, seeing him scoop up coins for his pockets and the solid gold watch I never tired of seeing, and the little bottle he said was cough medicine even in summer, and, of course, his important speech.
"You're goin’ to speak, Gramps?"
EQMM, July 2010 Page 17