Chapter 64

So I vowed to keep quiet, but that little nervous giggle escaped from me again. “Oh boy, Mr. Stamper here is got a good sense humor, seein’ our car in this fix!” And I felt the hand grow even tighter on my arm.. . . Almost oblivious now to the hand, Lee watches the little birds work the runneling beach: How their poor bonded lives are written for them ...everlastingly tuned to the pitiless sea, immutably timed to the measured echo of the waves. “An’, y’know, guys, the way I see it, a fellow like Mr. Stamper with such a good sense humor about our fix he should be able to help us outen it, I see it that way.” I didn’t see it at all that way, but I didn’t voice my dissension. I half turned to gauge the distance to the jetty, but the driver’s gum-cracking henchmen read my look and shuffled over to cut off any attempt at a sudden break, and I began to feel properly trapped (At the bottom of the hole the boy’s eyes burned from long minutes without blinking. His numbed legs had collapsed unnoticed beneath him and his crumpled skull mask dangled from his neck like an amulet. The aching cold in his fingers was forgotten as he watched the light in the sky overhead move closer to his restricted line of vision. “I’m ready, Father in Heaven. O please. Come take me. I don’t want to die in this old hole. I don’t want to go home ever again. Just come and take me with you, O God...”) and also for the first time properly afraid; I’d heard tales of these beach hooligans and their ideas of sport. . . . Lee shakes his arm free of the driver’s grip and moves a few steps closer to the sea. He feels tired, almost sleepy. He looks for the daytime moon but the clouds have blown across it. He looks back at the busy detail of birds working the dangerous surf; their hectic pecking and hunting makes him more tired than ever... “Gosh, I mean, you’re a Stamper, Mr. Stamper; a Stamper oughta be able to help us out.” . . . He sees the birds as slaves, slaves to the rocking waves. “I mean, now say, for instance Hank Stamper, I bet he could just put a big strong shoulder agin our car and push it out with one heave.” Slaves, birds in bondage to the waves. Run run run down the beach right at the edge of the receding wave peckety peckety peckety after sand fleas turn around run run run back before the next wave rolls salty death over you ...over and over and over. (The little boy prayed fervently in his constricting dark, as the wind blew a hymn over the top of the hole, and the light came closer, brighter . . .) “An’ if Hank could do it I bet you could do it too, hey? So let’s see you put a shoulder an’ try. Come on, hey?”  I saw there was nothing to do but humor my tormentors and hope that they would grow tired of the game; so I rolled my pants legs another roll and walked around to the seaward side of the car. The water was like cold knives against my ankles. I put my shoulder against the rear fender and made as though I were shoving. . . . Slaves to the waves; pause too long pecking out a morsel from the running sand and WATCH OUT all the others turn run run run back except one careless bird, and when the wave rolls back a gray-speckled dot kicks desperately to free its wing from the sand before the next wave run run run up turn run run run back (“O Father in Heaven I see you comin’ I’m waitin’ I’m waitin’!”) turn run run run . . . “You gonna have to do better than that, Mr. Stamper; Hank Stamper’d be downright ashamed, you goin’ at it so puny an’ the water getting so high.” . . . One of the other birds comes across the drowned wad of feathers and pauses for a fraction of a second before running on in his eternal game with the waves; can’t stop! no time to mourn! sand feas or starve! No time, no time! (The light brightened. The boy could see one edge of it, like the tip of a great glowing finger crooking to him from the sky!) “Mr. Stamper, I don’ even think you’re tryin’. We’ll have to help you out.” I felt the icy rasp of salt water scrape my throat, and the first choking of panic. “C’mon, you can try!” . . . He feels tiredness creeping up his bones like the cold; he tosses his head and spits a mouthful of water. The birds, why do they do it? He thinks of the Darlingtonia he picked earlier. They aren’t like the birds, they can afford the luxury of patience. They can wait. And if one doesn’t attract his quota of flies and starves, it is only the dropping of a leaf. The plant still lives, the roots still live. Bur that little bird was just one and when he drowned, that was it, that was all of him, the one little bird. He lost. The wave wins, the bird loses. And the waves always eventually win. Unless . . . “Right down here, Mr. Stamper, your shoulder.” My mind became frantic as I felt more hands on me. . . . Unless you play it smart, unless you acknowledge your fate and accept it. Like the car.... “Get your shoulder here, Mr. Stamper.” “You better not . . . my brother will . . .”  “Your brother will what, Mr. Stamper? Your brother isn’t here. All alone, you said.” . . . He doesn’t struggle against them; they begin to weary of the sport without a struggle... “My goodness, you got wet, Mr. Stamper.” . . . And even when they step back he doesn’t try to come out of the water that is breaking waist deep . . . “You must really like the water, Mr. Stamper.”... He turns instead toward the incoming froth of the waves, looking out at the beautiful line of the horizon, then at the frantic efforts of the silly birds. All the poor silly devils need do is run run run and then wait . . . for that cold final crack to stop the whole insufferable hassle. A half-dozen steps and you end this frantic game. You don’t win, but you don’t lose, either. A stalemate is the best you can hope for, don’t you see? The very best . . . “Look.” “Who’s that?” “Oh Christ-o-Friday. It is him. . . .” “Split! Everybody split!” The driver leads and the others follow, sprinting off toward the dunes. Lee doesn’t notice them leaving. He is tossed off balance by a wave. He is completely under for a moment, and when his face rolls into the air once more, serene and thoughtful, he sees again that tranquil horizon: You come into this scene begging for quarter. Silly bird. You spend all your time calling King’s-X, hoping to halt the game temporarily. You could learn from the fox and his sharpie ways. Screw it. Forget King’s-X. Stop the game completely, stop the frantic hassle. Call it a draw while there’s still a chance. WATCH OUT. No; concede. WATCH OUT! WATCH OUT! WATCH OUT! YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME! Just see if I can’t. I concede . . . “Lee!” I call it a draw ...“Bub!”—and walks toward horizon, into the lifting white embrace of the water . . . “Goddammit anyhow—”... into the rolling gray What? “Lee!” “What? Hank?” I pushed myself up from the sand where the Dayglo Gang had thrown me. “Hank?” And through the lace of foam frozen briefly in the air, I saw him coming over the rocks of the jetty. Not running yet; walking fast but not running. His fists clenched and his arms swinging and his boots spitting sand, but not running. They ran, the Plastic People, all five of them, they ranasifthe devil were afterthem. ButHank just walked. He never for a moment blew his cool.... Through distance and his foam-flecked glasses, Lee watches the scene on the beach. He watches the teen-agers flee as Hank closes the distance (“O Heavenly Father, I see your old light coming!”) He is still being wallowed about by the waves out past the car as he watches Hank come. He makes no move toward deeper or shallower water—but, wait a minute! what’s Brother Hank doing out here in place of his wildwoods wife?—no decision until an overpowering curiosity finally breaks the deadlock and he begins floundering awkwardly through the snowy foam toward the beach where Hank waits with his hands in his pockets. All right, it may be a frantic hassle but you can call it a draw some other day ... not even to come into the water to my rescue did he blow his cool; but, wait a minute: what’s he doing out here instead of ... he just stood on the bank with his hands in his pockets, watching me fight my way out of the surf. “Damn, Lee,” he encouraged me when I got close enough, “if you ain’t about the poorest excuse for a swimmer I ever saw, I’ll eat my hat.” I couldn’t even make a clever reply. I plopped to the sand, gasping and spent and feeling as if I had swallowed my weight in salt water. “You could ...have...at least—” “I tell you one thing that would help,” Hank said, grinning down at me; “you’d do better wearing a bathin’ suit ’stead of corduroy pants an’ a sports jacket next time you go swimmin’ with your friends.” “Friends?” I wheezed. “They were a gang of toughs ...trying to kill me. You were almost too late...they might have... drowned me!” “Next time I come I’ll bring a bugle an’ blow the cavalry charge. What reason did they give, by the way, for the drownin’?” “A very good reason ...as I recall.” I was still lying on my side with the waves lapping hungrily at my feet, and I had to think a moment before I could remember what that very good reason was. “Oh yes ...because I’m a Stamper. That was their reason.”  “Reason aplenty, it seems,” he said, and finally condescended to lean over and help me to my feet. “Let’s get over to Joby’s an’ get you in some dry clothes. Boy. Look there at you. That’s something. How a man can be damn near drowned by a gang of toughs and still never lose his specs. That’s truly something.” “Never mind that. What are you doing here? What happened to Viv—the rock oysters?” “I got the jeep parked just back of the driftwood there. Come on. Look out, grab your shoes! That wave like to got ’em . . .” By the time Lee has retrieved his shoes Hank has already started back up the beach, in the same hurrying walk: Where did you come from, brother, like a Mephistopheles in logging boots? (Out on the dark dunes more and more of the light showed in the hole; the little boy beat at his cramped thighs with mounting anticipation: “Yes! Yes! Yes God yes!”—more and more, brighter and closer, slowly . . .) Why did you come instead of her? “What are you doing here?” I repeated, jogging to catch up with him. “Something’s come up. Joe Ben tried to find you after church but you’d gone. He gave me a call on the phone. . . .” “Where’s Viv?” “What? Viv couldn’t make it. I asked her to stay and help Andy tally up the booms . . . ’cause the heat is suddenly on. Joe phoned to say there was a meeting of Evenwrite and the boys, and the top union dog of the whole business. He said that they got the whole story about our deal with WP. Everybody knows. An’ that the whole town’s got their tit in a wringer.” ...You were jealous, Lee decides triumphantly; you had misgivings about letting her come in to me! (Slowly brighter and closer . . .) “So you came?” I asked, feeling my disappointment turn to a covert elation. . . . And your jealousy has given me strength to make the moon wait another month. “In Viv’s place?” “Christ yes I came in her place,” he answered, flapping his hands against his pants legs to rid them of the sand that he’d picked up helping me to my feet. “I told you that once. What’s the matter’th you? one them punks bust you across the head or something? Come on! Let’s get up to that jeep; I want to get into the Snag an’ see how the winds are blowin’.” “Sure. Okay, brother.” I fell in behind him. “Right with you.” My pot hangover disappeared, and, in spite of the cold, I was blooming with sudden enthusiasm: he had come in her place! He was already sweating the possibility of a scene!