Night Magic (12 page)

“At least most of you can dry off,” she told him, draping McClain’s poncho around her neck and trying her best to brush the water off her soaked jeans. It was impossible, of course, with water sloshing in the bottom of the raft. After a few minutes she resigned herself to freezing.

In minutes they were beyond the protective banks of the creek. The current was much swifter in the river The water was up to McClain’s chest when he hauled himself up over the side. The raft heeled precariously. Clara threw herself as far to the opposite side as she could, leaning out over the swirling water at a ninety degree angle. Puff climbed her arm with a yowl to sit perched on her shoulder as water sloshed into the raft in McClain’s wake.

“I knew I’d find a use for you two sooner or later,” he said with evident satisfaction, sitting up and then kneeling as he retrieved the oars from where they had rolled beneath the sides.

“What’s that?” Clara asked suspiciously, straightening but still holding tightly to the side with one hand as she dislodged Puff with the other.

“Ballast,” he answered with a grin, pulling his poncho
from around her neck and yanking it over his head before thrusting an oar at her. Then he crawled forward before she could brain him with her oar.

Fortunately, since Clara had never maneuvered a raft in her life (outdoor pursuits were not much in her line) the thing floated downriver with the minimum of assistance, drawn along by the rain swollen current. All kinds of debris swirled in the water around them, branches and even whole trees, rubber tires, a grocery cart, aluminum cans, cardboard boxes. At one point the bloated carcass of a cow floated past, swirling in slow circles, accompanied by the sickening stench of rotting flesh; McClain speculated aloud that it must have fallen in from some slippery bank and had been unable to get out before it drowned. On either side of the river, which was perhaps a quarter of a mile across, tall trees in their autumn foliage lined the banks. That the water rose partway up the trunks of some of them was evidence of the river’s recent rise.

‘Do you have any idea where we are?” Clara had lost all sense of direction during that wild run from the tracking dogs. McClain was paddling in a desultory manner, not so much to propel the raft but to keep it on course and away from both the banks with their hidden obstacles and the swiftly running center of the river.

‘Well, we ditched the car just to the south of Pipers Gap. Since then we’ve been moving in a sort of southwesterly direction. We may even be in North Carolina by this time. We’re certainly headed that way.”

“What river is this, do you know?”

McClain pursed his lips. “The New? It’s just a guess, but if this isn’t it we’re near it. Geography was never my best subject.”

It hadn’t been Clara’s, either. The only rivers she knew
were the Mississippi, the Ohio, and of course the Potomac. None of which this one was. The New River seemed as likely as any.

“McClain—”

He sighed. “Why don’t you call me Jack? The way you say ‘McClain’ reminds me of my old drill sergeant, the terror of Parris Island. I hate being reminded of Sergeant Jackson. He cussed me out a minimum of ten times a day.”

“What for?” Clara thought the name Jack suited him much better than the John he had been christened, but she felt a little awkward at the idea of calling him by his first name. When she called him McClain it served to set a distance between them, a distance that she wasn’t sure she wanted to eliminate. Her thoughts were momentarily diverted by the idea of him as a green young recruit blanching before a tough drill sergeant.

“Fun. He liked watching people squirm. He was a real asshole. He finally bought the farm in Nam. Nailed by his own troops, I heard.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“Were you there?”

“When old Iron Balls bought it? Nope. Too bad, too.”

“I meant in Vietnam.”

“Yeah.”

Clara shook her head. He had his back to her so he didn’t see the exasperation evident in her gesture. Getting information out of him was about as easy as keeping Puff out of the refrigerator.

“You were in the marines?”

“Yeah.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty, twenty-one I dropped out of college to join up. More fool me.”

“When was that? The late sixties?”

“Sixty-eight and nine. Which makes me thirty-eight, if that’s what you’re getting at. Not that much older than you, I’d guess.”

“I only just turned thirty,” replied Clara, stung.

“That’s what I said,” he answered smugly, and again Clara had to fight the urge to bop him with her oar. There was a moment’s silence as she struggled with an acute case of piqued pride.

“So what was it like, Vietnam?”

“What is this, twenty questions?” He finally turned to look at her. His eyes were narrowed, his jaw hard. There was tension in the set of his broad shoulders.

“I was just curious. Curiosity is a writer’s stock in trade, you know. You never know. If you tell me all about it your life story might end up in one of my books.”

“God forbid,”

Clara was affronted. “They’re very good books,”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“They are!”

“Okay, they are. Gloria’s a big fan of romance novels. That’s her biggest problem. She keeps expecting Mr. Wonderful to come charging up on a white horse and carry her off with him.”

Clara’s eyes narrowed. “Poor woman. Her life must be rife with disappointment.”

McClain looked suspiciously at her over his shoulder. “Is that some kind of dig at me?”

“Certainly not. But to a woman who’s waiting for a
knight in shining armor you must certainly seem like the booby prize of the century.”

“You know, you’ve got a damned nasty tongue. No wonder you’re not married.”

Clara glared at his broad back. He hadn’t even bothered to turn around to deliver the insult, which added it to injury.

“How do you know I’m not? Maybe my husband is traveling on business or something.”

“You don’t wear a wedding ring.”

“So? A lot of women don’t anymore, Mr. Dark Ages.”

“You don’t kiss like a married woman.”

“Maybe it depends on whom I am kissing.” She thought she injected a nice scathing note into that.
He
couldn’t see how her cheeks burned at the memory of their kiss.

“Besides,” he added softly, still without looking around, “I read the bio inside the back cover of your book. ‘Miss Claire Winston, who has vowed never to marry until a man as irresistible as her fictional heroes comes along, resides with her mother on her family’s antebellum estate, Jollymead, in the horse country of Virginia.’ “

He quoted the last in a mocking falsetto that made Clara grit her teeth and flush to her hairline. She had hated the way the blurb writers worded that bio from the first time she had seen it. Which had been much too late to keep it out of her book.

“Oh shut up,” she said. “It’s not a disgrace to be unmarried, you know. Not in this day and age.”

“Then why does it embarrass you so much?” That soft taunt hit home. Clara glared impotently at the back of that close-cropped black head, imagined with a moment of real pleasure what it would be like to send her oar arching into intimate contact with it, and dropped the idea with deep
reluctance. She had no doubt that his retaliation would be immediate and extremely unpleasant.

“You shouldn’t have too much trouble landing a man, you know,” the ape with the paddle continued in a soft, goading voice. “You’re not unattractive, exactly. You could use a little makeup and a trip to a good hairdresser, and you could maybe stand to lose about ten pounds, but on the whole I’d say you’re as good looking as a lot of the gals with husbands.”

“Well, thank you very much,” Clara spat. She had gone rigid at his catalogue of her “virtues,” and now sat clenching her fists as she glared daggers at his back. “Coming from a box-faced, squash-nosed Neanderthal I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Maybe it’s your kissing technique,” her tormentor continued musingly. “It certainly could use improvement. I’d liken kissing you to sucking on an overripe tomato. Lots of mush, but no texture or bite.”

“Why, you …” That did it. Retaliation or not, she was going to brain him. She surged to her feet, swinging the oar. The raft bucked wildly, the oar missed its mark by a mile, he cursed and looked over his shoulder—and she fell into the river with a splash that rivaled any ever made by Moby Dick.

When she surfaced seconds later, sputtering and choking on the muddy water, Puff was staring at her over the side of the raft and McClain was laughing so hard that she hoped for a minute that he would fall into the river, too. But he didn’t, of course. Instead, he obligingly stretched his oar toward her, and when she caught it hauled her close to the side. Of course, with her clothes soaking wet and her natural athletic ineptitude, she could not heave herself aboard. He had to reach down, grab the waistband of her jeans, and
haul her over the side. For a moment Clara flopped around he bottom of the raft like a landed fish, glaring at his soggy sneakers which were all of him that she could see. Then she scrambled to her hands and knees, crawling precariously through the two inches of water she had brought to huddle in the stern, wrapping her arms around her body in a vain effort to stop herself from shivering. Puff took one look at her and turned tail, marching with great dignity as close to McClain as he could get before turning to glare at her. McClain guffawed loudly as she scowled right back at him. Her attention shifted to McClain; thoughts of murder ran rampant in her head.

“I hate you,” she said with conviction.

“Oh, and I was hoping you’d think I was irresistible,” he said with a simper, then roared again at the picture she made clenching her fists and glaring at him, soaked from head to toe in muddy water, drenched hair straggling over her face, each matted strand sending its own individual rivulet over the soaked poncho, smears of mud marking her left cheek, and an enormous puddle of water forming around her bottom.

“You are a—” she started furiously. He shook a finger at her.

“Uh—uh,” he said. “Any more insults out of you and I won’t let you wear my blanket. You’ll just have to sit around in those soaking wet clothes until you freeze.”

His warning effectively silenced her. She glared at him as he pulled his poncho over his head and passed it to her. If she hadn’t been absolutely freezing she would have told him to take it and stick it where the sun don’t shine. As things were, she accepted it with poor grace.

The idea of undressing with him sitting two feet away, even though he had his back turned as he guided the raft,
made her grit her teeth. He was the most loathsome man she had ever met; she hated him; she despised him; she hoped Rostov caught him and tortured him to death. It was what she would like to do herself if she could. But if she did not get her clothes off soon and get into something dry and warm, she thought she would die. So, fixing him with a killing stare that his occasionally heaving shoulders only sharpened, she kicked off her soggy boat shoes, rolled down her dripping jeans, and pulled the soaked poncho and flannel shut over her head. She hesitated for a moment over her teddy, which when wet was nearly transparent, throwing him a suspicious look. But his attention seemed fixed on the upcoming curve in the river—and the teddy was as clammy as the rest. Sliding the spaghetti straps down her shoulders, she quickly stepped out of it and pulled his relatively dry poncho over her head. Oh, blissful warmth! She had not realized how bone cold she was until she experienced the rough comfort of that blanket, still warm from his body. Shivering, she sat on the back roll of the raft, careful to hang on so as not to fall off backwards but unable to sit any longer in that puddle of freezing water on the bottom. Her feet could not escape, however. She leaned forward, careful to keep the tails of the poncho out of the water, wrapped her legs with her arms, and watched her feet turn blue.

“I take that back about you needing to lose ten pounds,” the fiend said softly. “Five would do it.”

As he had no doubt intended, the mocking revelation that he had watched her undress sent her temper soaring again. But she was too cold and too miserable to attempt any further overt action. Seething impotently, she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. One day… one day she would make him pay.

“You are undoubtedly the most insufferable man I have ever met in my life,” she said with conviction. Then, setting her jaw resolutely, she pretended he didn’t exist as she wrung out her soaking clothes and arranged them along the sausage rolls at her side as best she could in hopes that they would dry.

XII

Half an hour later it was dark. Clara was shivering uncontrollably as she bailed water from the bottom of the raft with her shoe, a task that the heartless beast in the bow had set her to, telling her that if she didn’t want them to swamp she would bail. As her shoes didn’t hold much, and her sojourn overboard had brought in quite a bit, the task promised to take a long time. And she was freezing in the meantime. Between the chill of the night and her nakedness, the blanket that had seemed so warm when she had first donned it now was little protection.

“McClain, I’m freezing,” she said finally. He shrugged and kept paddling.

“I’m also starving.”

“It was your cat that ate our lunch.”

“So? I’m still starving. And I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Go over the side.”

Clara gave up. He was the most unfeeling man she had ever met. She was probably going to die in the miserable little rubber boat and he wouldn’t care a snap. He would just toss her body into the river
She alternately bailed and fumed silently, shivering all the while. The river at night was an eerie place, not as dark as the shrouded forest on either side but a glistening black swath cut through the shifting shadows. Strange rustlings came from the bushes along the bank. McClain was careful to stick fairly close to shore, both to avoid the possible sweep of a helicopter down the river and the treacherous plethora of objects that littered the river toward the middle. Thus Clara was able to make out slinking shapes of animals as they crept from the trees to drink at the river’s edge. Once she even thought she saw a bear and its cubs, but they were far ahead so she couldn’t be sure. Just the thought of walking through a forest where bears lived made her shiver more than she was already.

The moon came up, a glimmering white sickle occasionally obscured by the dark clouds that blew across the sky. Stars twinkled in the narrow overhead path that was visible from the river. The wind picked up and grew colder, carrying with it the scent of pine needles and rotting worms in equal proportions. Huddled in the poncho which was too narrow and reached to perhaps her knees when she stood up (which she now knew better than to do), Clara thought she had never been more miserable in her life.

McClain seemed tireless, right at home under such adverse conditions, she thought, eyeing him with dislike. Of course, he wasn’t sitting around nearly naked with damp hair, either. Only Puff seemed to echo her discomfort. He was pacing up and down between the two of them, staring toward shore, and now and then uttering a piercing yowl.

“What ails the hairy monster now?”

Correctly interpreting McClain’s reference to mean Puff, Clara glared at his back.

“At a guess, I’d say A; he’s hungry, and B: he probably has to go to the bathroom.”

“He’s not nearly as hungry as I am, thanks to him. And as for the other, tough. He can hold it.”

“He can only hold it so long,” Clara warned with malicious enjoyment. “He has a bladder problem. He’s a very old cat, you know.”

“Great.”

McClain sounded about as cheerful as she felt, which paradoxically improved her mood. She hoped he
was
miserable. He deserved to be miserable. …

Puff yowled again, the sound more piercing than ever.

“You keep that thing as a pet?” McClain demanded with apparent disbelief. “I’d sooner keep a vampire bat.”

“I’m sure you would,” Clara responded sweetly. Puff yowled again.

“All right, all right.” There was some hope for McClain after all, Clara decided with surprise. This remark had been addressed directly to Puff. “Hold on, will you? We need to stop for the night anyway.”

Unmollified, Puff yowled piercingly and resumed his pacing.

“You’d better hurry,” Clara informed McClain with unalloyed joy. “He’s really got to go. I don’t know if you’re familiar with male cats, but—”

“I’m not, and I don’t want to be,” McClain replied shortly, and began to maneuver the raft toward the left bank. When they were perhaps two feet away, he jumped out and dragged it the rest of the way in. Puff leaped out before the raft had even reached the shore and disappeared into the shadows beneath the trees.

“If we’re lucky he won’t come back,” McClain said as Clara slid her clammy shoes onto her feet before inadvertently
stepping out into about six inches of icy river water. Swearing under her breath, she sloshed up on the bank. She was so cold she didn’t think it was possible to get any colder.

“Or maybe a bear will have him for dinner,” McClain continued on the same hopeful note. Clara ignored him. She was too miserable for arguments. She was too miserable even to worry about Puff. She was too miserable for anything except being miserable. To top it off, she too had to go to the bathroom. With a sour look at McClain, she tromped off behind the same bushes Puff had favored. There were some advantages to being next door to naked, she reflected.

“What now?” she demanded when she returned to see McClain pulling the raft up into the trees and, placing the oars beneath it, overturn it under some bushes. Her still wet clothes tumbled into the litter of leaves, Clara scarcely noticed.

“I thought I saw a cabin up through the trees. If we’re lucky it’s empty.”

“Wh—where?” Clara was so cold she could barely talk. McClain took a look at her, frowned, and headed in a southerly direction through the trees. After perhaps a hundred feet she saw it too, a small log cabin, not much more than a shack, actually, perched crookedly beneath a tall pine. The windows were boarded up and the place had the forlorn air of having been deserted for years. It also looked as though it might collapse at any second, but at least it was shelter from the rising wind and that was all that Clara cared about for the moment.

“Do you think you can break in?”

McClain snorted. “I don’t imagine much breaking will be required.”

He walked up to the door, which was a foot or so off the ground as though a step had once stood before it. When he pushed on the door, it moved inward with a rusty creak for about three inches before stopping. After another gentle shove, which produced no progress, McClain put his shoulder to it and pushed. With a piercing shriek of outraged hinges, the door swung open.

Inside the cabin was as dark as a cave except for the slightly grayer rectangle cut by the open door. It smelled of mildew, but Clara didn’t care. She was right on McClain’s heels as he stepped up and in. She would face anything just to get out of the cold.

“Umph!” She was concentrating on not putting her feet through any of the holes in the floor when she bumped into McClain’s back and stopped, standing as close to him as she could. She was really freezing, and the warmth his body emanated was as welcome as a furnace.

“Graceful as ever, I see,” he remarked sourly over his shoulder. But he drew her beside him and put his arm around her, all with such an unpleasant expression on his face that Clara knew better than to get the wrong idea. He was simply trying to warm her.

“I don’t suppose you’ve got any matches?” Given the state of her undress, McClain’s little joke didn’t even drag forth a reply. She stood, shivering, pressed up against him even though he had removed his arm, feeling his movements as he fished in his pockets. There was a clatter of change, a rattle of crumpled paper, and then a pleased grunt.

“Matches?” she asked.

“Better. A cigarette lighter. Wait here.”

“Where are you going?” But it was too late. He had already headed out the door, withdrawing his precious
warmth. When he reappeared seconds later, he was carrying a flaming torch made out of something that looked like a pine cone. As McClain held it high, they both surveyed the interior of the cabin.

The inside was as rickety looking as the outside. The walls were made of rough slabs of wood haphazardly fitted together so that chinks of the darkness outside showed through the joinings. The two boarded windows had once had glass in them. A few shards were left clinging to rusty metal frames. The far wall was lined with shelves, on which several ancient looking canned goods still rested. A rusty potbellied stove sat in one comer, the stovepipe slanting up at a crazy angle through a jagged hole in the roof. The floor was rotting linoleum over equally rotting wood, mined with holes. The roof appeared to be tin. The cabin itself was only one room, and it was bare of furniture of any description.

“It’s not the Sheraton, but it’s better than nothing,” McClain said, then yelped as the torch burned down to his fingers. Dropping the thing with a curse, he stepped on it to make sure that it was out. Then he turned and went back outside, leaving Clara standing, shivering, in the middle of the cold, dark room.

When he returned some five interminable minutes later, he was carrying a small armload of branches and was accompanied by Puff, who meowed imperiously when he saw Clara.

“I knew we wouldn’t lose him. My luck’s been running this way all week.”

Clara ignored that, kneeling and holding out her arms to Puff, who swarmed into them. She gathered him against her chest, murmuring soothing endearments into his ear. At least he was fairly dry, she was glad to note. Only his feet were still wet. He purred furiously at her attentions, butting
his head against her chin. After a moment she put him down. He stared up at her, rubbed himself against her bare, frozen ankles, and meowed ingratiatingly. When she did not immediately respond, being too busy shivering, he meowed again.

“What’s he squalling about now?” McClain was piling branches into the stove as he spoke.

“He’s hungry.” Clara was, too. She had a feeling that if she ever got over being on the verge of dying from the cold she would expire from hunger.

“Oh, is he? Listen, you mangy furball, I have not eaten for almost thirty-six hours, thanks to you. Keep on yowling and you may be my next meal.”

Puff merely looked at him and yowled harder, while Clara watched with greedy anticipation as McClain applied the small flame of the lighter to the tangle of branches in the stove. After a moment, a larger flame appeared, then flickered and grew.

“A fire,” Clara breathed, enraptured, rushing to stand near it, shivering harder in blissful anticipation of waves of warmth. Puff followed, still complaining. Clara ignored him with the ease of long practice. McClain fixed him with a baleful glare, then turned his attention back to the stove. For some moments he watched the slowly building blaze with a critical eye, then shut the door to the small stove. The stovepipe swayed precariously. Clara crowded nearer to the rusty black object.

“Don’t touch it, I imagine it’ll get pretty hot in a few minutes,” McClain warned, moving away. Clara paid no attention. The scant wafts of heat that were emanating from the squat thing were pure Nirvana. She could have embraced it.

“Corn, corn, corn and carrots.”

Clara looked around to find that McClain was using his lighter to read the dusty labels of the cans still left on the shelves.

“Do you suppose that stuffs still any good?” she asked through chattering teeth.

McClain shrugged. “The cans appear to be intact. We can open them and see if they look all right. I don’t know about you, but I could eat a—cat.” He added this last as his eyes fixed on Puff, who, seeing him holding a can, was staring avidly up at him and yowling with the vigor of a cheerleader at a pep rally.

“Sorry, pal,” he said to Puff with what sounded like malicious enjoyment. “Nothing here for you. Just veggies. Better luck next time.”

“Oh, he’ll eat anything,” Clara assured him. McClain had set the can down and was fishing in his pockets for something. The screwdriver. He brought it out with a triumphant flourish and proceeded to attack the can, making a good sized hole in the lid after a series of whacks and jerks. After inspecting the contents, he set the can down on top of the stove and proceeded to open another and do the same. Finally all four cans were opened and warming on the stove. The smell of food—even com and carrots, neither one of which had ever been high on Clara’s list of favorites—was enough to make her dizzy. She hadn’t eaten since her meal at Mitch’s house more than twenty-four hours before, she realized. Then she remembered he’d said that he had not eaten for thirty-six hours, and almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Puff yowled pitifully, staring up at the open cans. Clara’s stomach growled in concert. She heard another rumbling sound and frowned. It took her a moment to realize that McClain’s stomach was growling as well. This shared
human weakness softened her toward him just a little. It was good to know that at least some of her misery was shared, even by so loathsome a creature as he.

“Soup’s on,” McClain said, gingerly picking up the cans and setting them on the floor. Puff rushed over to them immediately; McClain swatted him away with a foot. Puff yowled piteously as McClain dropped to sit cross-legged, guarding his prize. Clara sat too, careful to keep the makeshift poncho about her. Even with McClain’s belt holding it in place at the waist it was not the most reliable of garments.

“Oh, give him some, please,” Clara said impatiently as Puff continued to yowl.

“We only have four cans.”

“He can have some of my share. There’s no way we’re going to eat four cans of vegetables, anyway.”

“The way I feel now I could eat four grocery stores full of vegetables, much less four cans. And he, if you recall, had two ham sandwiches.
My
ham sandwiches. The…” His words lapsed off into indecipherable muttering, accompanied by a dark look at Puff.

“Please…”

Yowl! Puff yowled again.

“Oh for God’s sake.” McClain picked up one of the cans of corn and, turning, dumped about a tenth of its contents on the dirty linoleum behind him. Puff was on it with the avidity of the starving. McClain watched him in narrow-eyed disbelief.

“That cat’s unnatural.”

“No he isn’t. He’s hungry. And so am I.”

That brought McClain’s attention back to her. He looked her up and down with that same narrow-eyed stare he usually reserved for Puff, reached down into the jagged hole
he had made in the top of the can of corn with two fingers, scooped up some corn, popped it into his mouth, and chewed with evident enjoyment.