Five Smooth Stones (134 page)

"Never mind! Never mind. I—I'll be down—"

The whimpering, tearless sobs did not lessen as she packed frantically. It took only a little time; she had only unpacked necessities the day before. August. August, and every plane full. Damn all those who wanted to travel for fun and denied it to those who needed it in a race against death. Maybe it wasn't death. "Critical." Not "serious" but "critical." That was worse. The sharp point of a carelessly packed pair of scissors pierced her hand as she pressed the contents of a bag down, brought blood, but no more than annoyance at the pain. A no-show, a no-show, a no-show at the airport; God, let there be a no-show at the airport. Hunter. He could help. She wanted to scream aloud at the sound of the tinny, double-ring of the telephone in his empty apartment, repeated for what seemed hours.

In the elevator a commercial traveler from the North looked at her curiously, and she instinctively reached up to straighten whatever hat she had on her head. What hat had she grabbed? What clothes put on? It didn't matter. Keep your head, Sara; keep your head; what will I do with it, what will I do with my head and my heart and my mind and my life if David's gone? Coffee. Hot coffee in the dining room. No. I can't swallow it. Time. It would take ten minutes, and there wasn't ten minutes in all eternity she dared spare now. Money. Would they take a check? Would they take a check at the airport for a no-show or a cancellation?...

Three running steps from the elevator toward the desk, and Hunter's arm was around her. "Easy. Easy does it, Sara."

"Hunter! Oh, God, Hunter I'm so glad. Hunter, David's—"

"I know, Sara. I know all about it. I hoped you wouldn't hear till I could tell you. I was on my way to your room—"

"I'm packed, Hunter. All packed."

"Packed!"

"Help me get a plane seat, Hunter."

"No! Sara, my God, no! I didn't think you'd pull this. You can't do anything. Nothing is as bad as the press makes it—"

"You can't stop me. I'll wait for a no-show or a cancellation. At the airport—" Even Hunter was unreal, standing there looking down at her, not a loved friend now, but an obstacle. No one was real, nothing was real but the word "critical" and David Champlin, who was nowhere near, was three thousand miles away, yet who was the only reality.

Hunter's fingers bit into her shoulders. His eyes were stern on her face, trying to call her back; then he gave up, his hands loosened their grip, his eyes retreated from their attack.

"Coffee, Sara. Pots of it, in the dining room while I see what I can do."

"No. I don't—"

"Shut up, Stoopid! Old dad Travis is in charge." In the dining room he forced her to sit, and ordered coffee and toast. "The coffee immediately," he ordered. Sara felt his hands on her shoulders again. "Stay there. Drink that coffee. Pull yourself together."

"Can you get a seat for me, Hunter? Do you think you can? It's August—"

"I won't do a damned thing unless you drink that coffee, ducks. That's the girl. I'll be back. It may take time."

It took a thousand years, but when they had passed and she saw him coming toward her, he was smiling.

"Two," he said. "Two different ones. TWA to New York or BOAC to Boston and New York." He pulled out a chair and sat facing her. "You may drop my name anywhere if it will give you status. Two reservations. In mid-August. They had to be first class. Anything else was impossible, even for me. Which?"

"BOAC. To Boston. Oh, God, Hunter, but you're wonderful." Of course she wanted Boston, because it was David more than New York was, and it was Brad and Peg and Sudsy and Rhoda.

"I'll cable Peg," said Hunter. "Now sit still, for Pete's sake, while I get myself some hot coffee. There's time."

***

They sat, each in a corner of the cab, as it drove away from the hotel; then Hunter slid over beside her, took both her clenched hands in one of his.

"I tried to reach someone over there on the telephone, but I couldn't. I'll keep trying. Peg's been cabled. And I telephoned your studio and talked to the formidable Mrs. Fudge. I'll pay her when I get back from the airport."

"Hunter, what did the porter call you back for when I was getting into the cab?"

"It—it was the receptionist who wanted me. Suspicious, aren't you? It was about your messages."

"But I'd already told them to forward them to you. Was it bad news, Hunter? Was it? Was it bad news?"

"No! It was not bad news, Sara. I swear it." His hand tightened slightly on hers. "Sara, we're not rushed for time and we've a very conservative cabby who's taking it easy. It would be a splendid idea if you'd cry your damned eyes out on the way to the airport. Much as I loathe weeping females."

"I—I can't—"

"Yes, you can. Just look out the window at the weather. It's raining like hell—"

"Is it?"

"Yes. Here's a handkerchief and I have a pair of dark glasses in my pocket."

Later he said gently, "If I put that handkerchief in front of the gas heater, it shouldn't take more than all day to dry. Feeling better?"

"I—yes—no. I'm sorry to have been loathsome."

"Quite all right, my dear. You can think better now. Anything else you'd like me to do?"

He tried to keep his eyes focused on the gray wet world ahead of them, a dim place of driving rain, slickly gleaming pavements, open umbrellas, and frustrated drivers. Looking at her was sharp pain, her pain and his own mingled. He knew she was sitting with both hands pressing the handkerchief to nose and mouth, eyes no longer streaming but breath catching like a child's on the echoes of spent sobs. He thought: I'm not in love with her; it's not in me to be in love with anyone, but if she had said "yes" last night, something good would have happened to me, inside. And thank God she didn't, because if she had, today would have hurt unbearably.

He heard a muffled sound he took to be a question. "Don't mumble your words, child."

"Hunter, can you pray?"

"Good God, Sara! I don't know. I suppose I can try, but it's a lot to ask of a guy who's on record as saying that existentialism is the modern opiate of the people. Besides, I don't fancy being snubbed by strangers—"

"David does."

"Pray, you mean? He damned well better. If he didn't, Li'l Joe Champlin would come back and beat hell out of him with an ectoplasmic club. Damn it, Sara, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be flip."

"It's—it's never done any good before. This is a sort of last chance—"

"A challenge to the Almighty? I'll try, sweetie. Though I must say I doubt that the voice of Hunter Travis, the objective modernist, the teller of tales of frustrated heels, the guy who acknowledges the human psyche as the only force, would be heard after all these years.... We're there, Sara.... Pull up your socks, kiddie; we'll head for a drink and the plane...."

As he watched the group of which she was a part go through the doorway and make its way to the bus that would

take them planeside, he kicked himself mentally for not noticing what hat she was wearing. It was usually the only way one could pick Sara out of a crowd, by what was on top of her head. He finally glimpsed the brown head, damp with rain, and some small and ridiculous green object atop that would be a Sara hat. Then the group broke apart at the bus door and he saw her completely, walking very straight and firm, shoulders squared, five feet tall, and not looking back.

He stood alone by a window, watching the bus cross the field in the driving downpour. " T can try,'" he muttered. " 'I can try,' I told her. Listen, God, don't let her do some damn-fool thing like go to Cainsville; don't let Sara go to Cainsville if you have to arrange for a broken leg. Sara and David, David and Sara, in Cainsville. If you ever want to hear from me again, don't let it happen. It's not a hell of a lot to ask—"

He turned away, slipping his hands into his pockets, and his fingers touched a crumpled scrap of paper. He drew it out slowly, hearing again the overcultivated, affected accents of the receptionist at the desk of Sara's hotel after the porter had called him back: "I'm frightfully sorry, Mr. Travis. I thought Miss Kent had left. It's a call for her from Germany. Düsseldorf. The telephonist told the operator she had left Perhaps she can return the call from the airport? I'm ever so sorry—"

Standing alone in the air terminal, Hunter looked at the pink scrap of paper, saw the words again he had read in the hotel lobby: "Düsseldorf" and "Christopher Barkeley" and a number. Then the words and the number gave way to Sara walking through the rain, straight and tiny, yet towering above all those around her, little Sara, going home.

CHAPTER 84

First there was one pain, grinding, huge, circumscribed, identifiable at last as in a shoulder. This, in the blackness, was all there was at first. Then there was another, and this was in a leg and was somehow familiar, had happened before, had been known a long time ago. There was pain, too, a dull aching pain, in his head, and something was holding it in, a something around his forehead, and that was all there was, just the pain and the blackness until he sensed movement at the periphery of the encompassing pain. Something touched his cheek gently, and he heard a man groan. The touch came again, light and soft, and again he heard a man groan, and knew it for his own voice. He had not meant it to be a groan, had meant it to be a word: "No." He fought the tide that was bringing him back to consciousness, and this, too, had happened before. Gramp had been there that other time, Gramp had touched his cheek. "So-so, little man." But that had been a long time ago, and Gramp had gone away. Gramp couldn't have touched his cheek because Gramp was gone, and with that realization the tide swept him to life and beached him, pain and all, on a strange bed, in a strange room, and in a moment he would open his eyes, but he did not want to yet because he was afraid.

Now a voice joined the sound of movement at the edge of the pain that walled him in. It was familiar; he knew the voice, and the fear receded. "He's coming round," it said. There were fingers on his wrist, and the voice said, very slowly and distinctly, "David. You are all right."

He tried to open his eyes, but the lids were leaden and the effort splintered the dull ache in his head into sharp, agonizing barbs. He tried to speak, but his lips were made of rubber and moving them took more strength than he could muster.

"Don't try to talk, dad," the voice said, and it was Sudsy's and the knowledge cut through the pain and darkness, and at last he managed to open his lids to a slit, but the light was more painful than the blackness, and he closed them again.

"It's Suds, David. You're in the hospital in Boston. There's nothing to worry about. My father and I are taking care of you. You're going back to sleep now. When you wake up, we'll tell you all about it."

There was something he had to tell someone; it was vital and urgent, and he could not sleep until he had told whatever it was, and then the edges of the pain that pressed in on him softened, the sounds could not be heard although they were still there in his consciousness, and then blackness obliterated thought and feeling and he let it carry him.

***

The second time he awakened, the pain crept through the darkness, moving slowly, pushing at his mind until it propelled him into consciousness. This time there was no fear, but he could not remember why there should be no fear, although there was still the sense of urgency. A woman's voice at a great distance said, "Call Dr. Sutherland. The patient's coming round again."

A year or more passed while consciousness receded and returned, receded and returned, like the ebb and flow of a tide on a rocky beach. There was a memory of the pain of light when he opened his eyes before, and he kept them closed, not opening them even when he heard Sudsy's low, "Hi, dad."

There was strength enough now to force the rubber lips to move. "Effie," he said.

"We know, David. Quiet now, huh?"

"Effie's dead."

"Yes. No talking, David."

"Hummer—"

A woman saying, "Shh-shh-"

"Bastards—"

"Later, dad—"

There was a firm hand on his arm, a sharp sting and a brisk rub.

"Suds. They let Effie die—"

"Take it easy, dad—"

"Little girl. Nothing but a chile—"

"Sleep a little more, David."

"Brad—Brad—"

"He's fine. He's O.K." The darkness was returning now, and he could not fight it off. He sighed, and realized for the first time that his body was bound round with something hard that would not let him move; then that one arm would move but that the other, where the pain was, lay cramped and stiff and immobile and that the pain in his leg was trapped as it had been so long ago in a hospital in New Orleans, by plaster. He managed to say, "Suds—" but the darkness obscured the answer.

***

Chuck Martin was waiting in the corridor outside Room 21 in Boston's new Endicott Memorial Hospital when Dr. Clifton Sutherland came out. "How's it going, Suds?"

Sutherland did not look directly at the other man. He crossed the hall and stood for a moment looking down into a patio-like courtyard where ambulatory patients sat basking in the sun. Chuck came and stood beside him. At last Sutherland said, "I think he'll be all right, if nothing unforeseen develops, and if there aren't injuries we haven't been able to spot. And I doubt that."

"So do I," said Chuck. "How many is it you've got on the job by now?"

"Six. Not counting me. There'll be more surgery. A hell of a lot of pain. A hell of a lot of time here. A lot of crippling in that leg. The good one. Or what was the good one. The fractured vertebrae should be O.K. in time and, of course, the facial injuries and the ribs and lung." He fell silent until Chuck moved closer and shook him gently by one shoulder.

"Stop torturing yourself, Suds. David never held it against you. He understood."

"But I didn't. I didn't understand one God-damned thing. Stupid, self-righteous, obnoxious—"

"Forget it. You're making up for it now."

"Am I?" He turned to Chuck. "Hell, until now, until I saw what they brought off that plane on a stretcher, dedication was just a word in the dictionary."