Reprisal

by Mitchell Smith

"Okay."

  ... There was one vase of flowers--red and white carnations--on the dresser in Lowell's room. He lay asleep, tucked under white hospital sheets, a white cotton hospital blanket. An IV tube, from a high stand's collapsing plastic bottle, was taped to his arm--another tube snaked from beneath the covers. ...

  The white blanket was mounded into a large cylinder over his left leg. There was a bitter odor drifting in the room's air.

  Joanna saw a small card propped against the flower vase, and stepped to the dresser to read it.

  To Cap, from the crew.

  Lowell, looking smaller, paler, was frowning in his sleep, breathing deeply, deliberately, as if he were working at it. His fox face was gaunt, weather lines cut deeper by some dream concern or pain barely buried. ... Joanna went quietly to the side of the bed to watch him sleep. A wounded baron of the sea, his green estates gone, his teeming silver fish now ghosts and lost to him forever.

  She whispered, "My fault, Captain," and reached down to stroke his forehead.

  He didn't wake. And, it seemed to her, was waiting to wake until she'd come to her responsibility. ...

  "... How is he?"

  Joanna got into the Volvo, closed her door. "He'll be all right. He was sleeping."

  Charis started the engine, pulled away down the drive. "Poor man," she said, and drove the four blocks to the second light and intersection with the state highway west.

  ... It seemed odd to Joanna to be riding on the mainland, to know there were thousands more miles of people, soil, forest--miles of cities and mountains stretching west, before the other ocean.

  Charis was a very good driver; she drove with full physical attention that still left room for talk. ... Frank had been a good driver. Louis had been dangerously bad, with a history of close calls while he thought of other things-perhaps, given what Wanda had said about him, imagining early-morning artillery introducing the dawn with flashing light and dreadful noise along some battlefield.

  In less than an hour, Charis drove from coastal country--drifts of glacial pebbles along the highway, stretches of pine with the hardwoods, small summer stands selling hot dogs, and french fries with malt vinegar and salt --to the first slow swales of rising land, darker dirt, and the commencement of denser forests of birch trees and maples standing with the evergreens.

  Joanna rested as passenger, looking out, recalling car trips in her childhood when she'd sat up in the passenger seat--on a suitcase for better seeing--while her mother drove, smoking Chesterfields and listening to folk music on the radio. Songs sung by long-haired girls, snottily certain of voices clear as water.

  "Is he really going to be okay?" First break of comfortable silence in some time.

  "His leg was hurt, but he should be all right." And interested in the girl's response-curiosity the most dependable human marker, after vanity--couldn't help adding, "Although I'm not sure he'll ever be the same. In the paper, it said he had to crawl from that site up to the road ... crawl, with a broken leg and whatever else. I'm not sure if even a strong man is ever the same after something like that."

  "Yes, he will be," Charis said. She spoke as if she and Tom Lowell were privy to a secret Joanna had not yet discovered, some conversation of blood and the sea. Her voice, in that short phrase, was a veteran's considering an enemy respected--and though in higher pitch, didn't sound like a girl's voice at all. ... The under-Charis had been heard for a moment, alert, implacable, and dangerous. This dull gray razor-edged metal was what had been hammered out of a little girl by years of torment.

  They were driving through forest now, hardwood leaves clustered dense and veiny green, filtering sunlight as they went.

  Joanna rode, and worked on her poem's introduction, small changes, the couplets beginning to break apart.

  The waves are the wind-bird's feather, that

  display Their plumage colors with the weather; so far today, White is their sheer shade shown, and green waiting For a turning moon to tug the rollers into breaking, And row the deeper currents, heave them into motion By the haul of swinging stone that shrugs the ocean. So crawls the water child across the carpet planet, Overseen by sailing tern, plover, gull, and gannet. Of this child and stirring wind, all children after, Bearing their decoration of claw, fin, and

  tentacle. Out of sea, and breezes, came the awkward variation That names itself thoughtful of its own foundation. Endowed for a moment with consciousness of spectacle, And riding the tidal occasions of sorrow or

  laughter.

  She murmured the introduction to herself, thinking about the inverted rhyme-scheme ending. The last six lines rhyming EFG-GFE. She liked the oddness, a slow, diverging drumbeat--a rhyme only in recollection after the steady rocking music of the couplets. ...

  "You okay?"

  "I was just talking to myself."

  "The poem?"

  "Yes. ..."

  "Rhymes come first?"

  "No, sweetheart, they don't--not for me. When I'm in the poem, rhymes come bobbing up like apples ... you know, when you're bobbing apples for Christmas?"

  "In a pan? Trying to bite them."

  "Right. No hands."

  "I've heard of that, but I've never done it." Charis swung out to pass a small yellow truck overloaded with stacks of sawn lumber.

  "It's fun."

  "We'll do it at Christmas," Charis said, and pulled out again, to pass a years-old Mercedes the color of tomato soup.

  As they went by, Joanna glanced over, and saw the woman driver turn her head to stare back. A middle-aged woman. Joanna registered that in the first instant--and in the second, saw the woman was naked, her white upper chest, her breasts exposed. And they were past, Charis moving back into lane.

  "God ...!"

  "What?"

  "You wouldn't believe it. ..." And there'd been something familiar about the woman's face. A face she should be able to remember. ... Joanna looked in her door mirror, and could see the Mercedes dropping farther behind them. The sun flashed across its windshield, so the driver couldn't be seen.

  A middle-aged woman. Naked, and staring at Joanna as if they knew one another, or should. Familiar eyes. ...

  "Joanna--what?"

  "Woman driving along with no clothes on."

  "Are you kidding?"

  "No, I'm not."

  "Weird. ..."

  "It's surprising, Charis, when you think about it--surprising that people manage to act and dress more sanely than they often feel. Surprising you don't see more naked people ... or people wearing bathroom rugs, with half-grapefruits on their heads."

  "Bankers with penis sheaths and propeller beanies."

  "Couples singing duets down the sidewalks. ..."

  Charis hummed a long note, then began singing. It was another show tune--an odd taste for someone so young ... an indication of her displacement. This was

  "Ol' Man River."

  "There's an old man called the Mississippi ..." Charis sang out in her uneven soprano--singing with no black dialect, filling in the apostrophes--and with such passion that serfdom in the old South might have involved young blondes more than any, and her ancestors among the sufferers.

  Joanna enjoyed listening to her--the forthrightness, her singing out with all her heart. The girl's voice filled the car with the best of her, with reminder of all she might have been, and Joanna began to sing with her--her voice, low alto, almost contralto. Hers was a woman's voice, richer, more certain than her daughter's ... embracing, supporting that fragile soprano. It was the first song Joanna had sung in a long time.

  "What does he care, if a man gets weary. ... What does he care if the land ain't free ...?"

  They sang the song through, humming where they'd forgotten the words--and as they sang, Joanna felt again that faint shifting that promised happiness, with now no reason at all.

  They rested in the dessert of completion of music, and Charis drifted the Volvo out to the passing lane ... then speeded up to overtake a station wagon with children seen in dim res
tless motion through its rear window.

  As they pulled even, Joanna glanced over for some confirmation of normalcy.

  She looked--was looked at, and struck still.

  It was the same woman, sitting naked at the wheel. She was staring over at Joanna while two nude children, less distinct, less individual, were battling mildly in the backseat, like memories of two little boys. ...

  The cars streamed along side by side through summer air, and as Charis pulled away, Joanna looked into the woman's eyes and saw that it was Rebecca--grown older in death, grown into the woman she would have become, the mother she would have been.

  Joanna closed her eyes as they went by. She sat still as Charis steered back into the right lane, and felt she could sit that way for many years and never move ... sit still while the car rotted around her.--Rebecca had had no love in her eyes, no marveling at her own return. There'd been only determination, stern and requiring. What Joanna's father might have forgiven, what Frank might have forgiven, what Tom Lowell might forgive--Rebecca would never.

  Charis had been her friend.

  "Charis--stop passing cars."

  "Stop passing ...?"

  "Yes, stop passing other cars."

  "I'm not going fast."

  "I know, but please stop passing them."

  Charis looked over at her, worried. "Want me to stop?--I can just pull over."

  "No. No, it's all right. Just ... don't pass anyone for a while."

  "All right, I won't. ..." A concerned daughter, her bereft mother still delicately balanced.

  Not balanced, but broken, and past any notion of bearing the unbearable.--It had not been a ghost returning, who'd come to her. It was she who'd called that image to herself as punishment for singing, for the enjoyment of singing, the evasion it represented. ... For irresponsibility.

  Dead Rebecca, with her time-touched face, her soft and sagging woman's breasts, her lost life and lost children, would be watching whenever Joanna passed by anyone--riding, walking ... any overtaking--since time was made of passing motion. She would be watching, until what must be done was done.

  Now, as Charis drove more slowly, staying behind other slow drivers, there was only landscape. Joanna conjured no more Rebeccas, no phantom grandchildren.

  There was only forest, and an occasional farm ... farm animals that didn't lift their heads to see her.--But there would come a time, and soon, when she would imagine even the beasts turning to watch as she went by.

  Joanna leaned back in the car seat, took deep breaths ... and each one helped a little more, until in a while she was only a woman who'd decided something while riding in a car through a beautiful summer afternoon. She might have been anyone, her daughter anyone's--though brighter and more beautiful.

  "Charis, what do you think? Would you rather stop off and do some caving before we go on to White River? ... We'd be going deep, and be down there for a while."

  "You bet!"

  "Sure? You might not like it at all."

  "You like it. You love it."

  "Yes, I do."

  "--Then so will I."

  They drove on for almost another hour, Joanna at ease, watching the sunlight on scattered summer flowers--weedy wildflowers, dull gold, pink, and pale powder-blue, growing in the ditch along the road. They drove, and the highway heaved slowly up into wooded hills, the sun slowly tilted to the west.

  Nine miles from White River, two miles from Whitestone Ridge, Joanna asked Charis to pull over and change places, so she could drive. ... It was complicated. There would first be a right turn onto a county road, paved, going north through the hills for almost a mile. Then two intersecting farm roads, graveled ... the left one climbing to a barbed-wire fence gate and no-trespassing sign--marking Howard Newcomb's land, and the rising flank of the ridge.

  From there, the gate closed behind them, it would be a maze of hunters' autumn tracks, rutted by high-sprung pickups, winding up and around through dense woods and berry brush.

  Only one--overgrown, and hardly traveled in any season--climbed high as the cave's entrance. It would be late when they got there.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Joanna had steered off the end of the track into undergrowth beneath evergreens, small shrubs crackling under the Volvo's tires.

  "We are trespassing, right? I mean, the sign down there ... and you're getting under cover here."

  "The landowner has sealed the cave ... so yes, we are definitely trespassing."

  "Okay!" And Charis was out of the car. "Have to pee."

  "We'll pee first, then unload gear. ..."

  Joanna was back out of the woods, and opening the car's trunk, when Charis came stomping through the brush. They undressed there side by side, under pine trees filtering failing light. Rain-clouds were bringing darkness early. ...

  They folded their clothes as they took them off, and tucked them into the trunk. Joanna hauled out the duffels, and unpacked caving clothes--long johns, flannel shirts, coveralls, thick socks, and two pairs of her boots ... one pair fairly old.

  ... Joanna's shirt and coveralls were slightly big for the girl. Charis rolled her sleeves and pants cuffs up a turn, then propped a foot on the Volvo's bumper to try on boots. "... Boots don't fit."

  "Try both pairs?"

  "Tried the left foot of both. ..."

  "Charis, are you saying I have big feet?"

  "You have elegantly mature feet.--Won't my light hikers be okay?"

  "Not best, but okay. You'll need to watch where you step; you won't have quite the support you should." Care, and concern.--It should be possible, now, not to care, not to be concerned. That should become possible. ...

  Joanna pulled out the rest of the gear, closed the trunk, and locked the car.

  Then, dressed and helmeted, burdened with equipment--the supply pack, gear pack, rope sack, and sleeping-bag duffel--and draped with a braid of dynamic rope, sets of webbing harness, and slings of jingling carabiners, they made the climb to the cave's narrow gate in one trip through brush and pine, Joanna leading. ... Thunder was grumbling over the hills.

  The steel-bar gate unlocked and pulled to swing squealing open, Joanna stepped aside with it, and paused for a moment, fiddling with the padlock. It was a test for newbies she'd learned from Jim Feldt in Tennessee, with beginners facing for the first time a cave's black, breezing, and vacant mouth.

  Charis went past her and in like a badger-ducked in without waiting, shouldering packs and rope braid to hustle away into darkness.

  "Wait, wait!--don't go farther!" Joanna followed, slammed the gate closed behind them, and reached through the bars to set the padlock and snap it shut.

  --A useful test. Charis would have to be reined in, not reassured.

  "Stay right there, sweetheart, and switch on your helmet light. Bad place up ahead.-Where the hell did you think you were going?"

  "Just ... in." Light bloomed from Charis's helmet lamp. Eyes bright, she stood hunched under gear and the passage's low, sweating ceiling.

  ""Just ... in"? Please, pause to think next time."

  "There's a hole in the passage back here."

  "Stay away from it. It's a slide. --Just stand where you are." Joanna crouched and went up the passage, hauling the supply pack and rope sack behind her.

  "Here we are!" Charis made a little girl's face of excitement.

  "Yes, here we are. Just ... just be a little thoughtful. There's a saying about pilots, and it's true for cavers, too. There are old cavers, and bold cavers--"

  "But no old bold cavers. Right."

  "Keep it in mind.--Okay, we'll rig you first. I really should have roped you from a tree, let you practice ascending and descending ... practice those changeovers."

  "I've done that a lot."

  "You've done it in daylight, rigging-in dry, climbing dry rock. This is not the same."

  "Joanna, I'll be careful."

  "All right. All right, let's see you rig for rappelling. ..."

  Charis sorted through t
he gear--apparently at ease working by helmet lamp--and was swiftly sit-harnessed and chest-harnessed, buckles checked, and the little ascender bag attached on a three-foot web tape. "Okay?"

  "Put three extra 'biners into your harness loops--you can lose a sling. And you may as well attach the tapes for the equipment sack, and sleeping-bag duffel, too. ^th'll be yours, rappelling; they'll hang free below you.--And clip on a safety shunt and runner."

  Charis snapped the carabiners on, attached the gear and duffel tapes. She sorted through the pack, found the shunt, and clipped its runner into her harness link. ... Then she dug for a descender.

  "What's that?"

  "Your grigri."

  "I know it's a grigri, Charis--what are you doing with it?"

  "A descender."

  "Charis, you use a grigri as a descender?"

  "Yes. Lots of climbers do."

  "Well, you're not going to do it down here; I don't give a damn what other people do. It's a belayer--to help control the belay rope if someone falls.

  It's not a descender. This drop, you use my rack or the bobbin."

  "I've used a bobbin."

  "It's an autolock."

  "I've used 'em. Case of trouble--let go of the handle."

  "That's right, and your safety shunt exactly the same." Joanna felt tired already; contradiction, that malignancy, was exhausting her. She began rigging herself, testing her harness buckles, her gear attachments, maillon, and carabiners. "--ationow, you tie us into these ceiling-bolt rings. Let's see you do it."

  Charis reached up and, her hands throwing swift shadows along the stone, snapped sets of doubled carabiners--positioned with their gates opposing-into both rings. Then she snaked the rope's running end through the lower pair ...

  and into a figure eight on a bight, and backed it. She led the remaining line through into another backed figure eight off the higher bolt ... tested both knots, and crouched smiling in lamplight, waiting for approval.

  "Always that thorough?"

  "Nope."

  "Well, you should be. Charis, you need to keep in mind that single rope means single rope. It's all we've got."

  "Right."