Seaview (35 page)

“Sammy hits down quick into the brush, and the Chipper brings eyes up from him and sees the final and distant whale swells, a spout, hint of the magic bracelet, the distant sky of birds, the place of horizon. He reaches out for it, wanting to be there, but it is no good of course. Hears roars to his left, landward, cries, and in the air the slap and shadow of dark wings above him, and the Chipper is finally fast in cutting out! … And, well, here I am, and I am possessed with no more breath for message.”

His arms dropped to his sides, coming down from the animated, jerky, and sometimes strangely graceful gestures. The Chair and Costa gaped; they had understood the words but were having trouble comprehending the import of the events. Campbell moved in to get down to specifics, rough casualty counts, and the possible current state of things. His hand came up in a gesture intended to keep the others quiet as he moved toward Chip.

Melinda saw it first and saw Campbell catch it in the corner of his eye and stop and turn. She pressed in and behind Allen's shoulder, as Campbell fell back, bringing the barrel of the weapon up. A wing tip came first and threw a shadow down over the carts and the five figures. There was still no sun, and a shadow did
not seem possible, but it was there, hard edged and huge, cutting its shape in the fairway where it met the apron, cooling the wet ground, causing the grass blades to flatten out. The tip was directly above the thin spire of the flagstick on the upper green, and the limp red flag came up and rippled out, showing its white number three. There was then a torque movement, as if the wing tip had been driven through by the flagstick, a slight turning that brought the tip of the other wing into view, and then the whole thing rose up, showing its expanse of underbelly to them. Their heads were craned back, their necks exposed, and they felt as one might feel lying in an open casket in an open grave, a uniformly dark sky above him, no clouds, the edges of the grave hole framing the vacant and still picture. And then a thing of movement entering the picture, at his feet, known first by feel, and coming up to where it moved into his vision, and his wishing for the higher vacant view, as the dark wings and the oblong body of some death flyer moved up and hovered and became still in the air above him.

It seemed to stand up on its tail for a brief moment. It had caught an updraft as it reached the near edge of the green where the ground fell off and rolled on down to the carts, and its wings were full of air and taut and open, lifting it almost straight up. They saw the ribbed struts in the wings and the scalloped ends of the fantail and the feathered half-moon curves of the ailerons. The field of the convex surface of the undersides of the taut wings was black, and there were various figures in the field looking down at them. In the umbrella dome of the left wing, the figures were human, and animal, but there was no place to focus, no clear order, and they throbbed and took precedence like dream images, lurid in their Day – Glo colors and comic-strip rendering: a man in uniform, in chains; starved desert animals in cages; a snake swallowing a bird; a miniature woman, handcuffed, half out of a tent; a small coffin; the head of a man in a golf cap; a transfixed dolphin on a spear; a coinlike medallion in a gloved hand.

In the dome of the other wing, and partly following the ribs
and struts, there was a huge geometric figure, a rough circle of red sticks and green wires that did not touch each other, extending to all corners of the field. They had had to fight to focus on the specifics in the left, but when they looked in the right wing their pupils dilated, and they could take in the whole of what they saw there. It was like looking up into the high skeletal expanse of a cathedral dome. It was airy, and there were a lot of spaces in it, and yet it seemed to press down and contain them.

And then they saw the beginning of ripples in the two domes, and for a moment the figures in them became animated and strangely alive. The tail of the hang-glider lifted as it came up and moved out from the slope into the air above them, and they saw the head of the oblong figure between the wings cock to the side slightly and look down and over at them. He was wearing a black aviator's cap, hugging his head tightly and buckled under his chin; his eyes were big and insectlike in his flight goggles. He wore a scarf of red silk around his neck, and it rippled out the way the flag had on the green. From his shoulders to his feet he looked embryonic, like a spire encased in wet leather, as if he were a gigantic mutant butterfly only half out of the cocoon. His arms were out and moving, manipulating the steering mechanism, a bar that seemed driven sideways through his neck.

His head came to a stop when his gaze reached them, and they saw him push the bar, lifting the glider so that it stalled and seemed to stop dead in the air, with wings snapping taut and full of the air. Then they saw his right hand drop to his belly and touch the weapon that was slung there and looked like a large and misshapen vestigial organ running from his groin to his upper chest. He quickly got it loose, dropping his left hand from the bar also, and swung it down from his body and out, his arms dangling low now. The weapon was coming around, the barrel dipping down toward them, and they could see the barbed, blue steel of the spearhead and the rubber tubes of the catapult. And then they saw sudden and fleeting indentations in the leather below the flyer's chest, his body lurch, and a shower of
little pellets fall. They heard the quick, dull blasts as Campbell fired his rubber bullets, and the rifle was halfway lowered when they glanced at him. When they looked back up, they saw the glider stop hovering and begin to rotate. They saw the flyer's still and unconscious body in its trussing, arms limp and slightly waving, and the top of his hanging, leather-encased head.

“Another one!” the Chair yelled, and they all turned to the left and saw the second glider drift down over the hill, back, and a little over the high rough halfway down the fairway near the red one-fifty marker. Campbell trained on it, but he did not fire. Midway through his turn he saw the third one come over the ridge.

“Get down!” he said, and he turned and headed for the rough that ran uphill toward the Jenny Lind tower and the Air Force domes above it. He ran low and zigzagged, and the spears sent from the gliders missed him as he disappeared; they struck and vibrated in the brush beyond the green's apron in his wake. Allen jumped half over Melinda in a turn, pulling her against his chest, and rolled as gently as he could, bringing the two of them out of the cart and down to the ground behind it, where he lay over her, on one knee, his crouched body supported by his right hand on the cart's side. Sighting across the seat, he saw Eddie Costa fall and roll, clutching his golf bag along his body, until he got half of himself under the Chair's cart and the golf bag quickly adjusted against his exposed side. When Costa went down, Allen could see Chip running.

He was headed in back of the green, hitting into the pines in the direction of the sea. His run was a little like a mimicry of Campbell's run, a half-lope and stutter step with some darting and weaving in it. He turned all the way around once, looking back. There was a muffled burst from above and down the fairway, and Chip stopped his turn and seemed to dive backward into the higher pines. The trees caught and held him, and he landed standing, arms thrown back and out, tangled in the branches. Allen saw him caught, his head cocked to the side, his eyes wide open, and then he saw the beginning of the seepage across his
body. It came out at his thin waist and formed a belt of blood there, and there was a place in the middle where the belt had a buckle, a filmy, convex, moonstone shape. For a moment the fluids paused in the belt of holes, and the boy looked girded with many colorful and rich jewels, like those set in the belts of champion wrestlers. His mouth opened and closed on the air, but no sound issued. He wanted to speak, it seemed, to finish or at least add to his story. He pulled his left arm free from his bed of pine and reached out in a sweeping and vague motion.

He either indicated the apron, beckoned to Allen, or gestured for his workbag that sat in the open beyond the carts. Then the jewels of fluid began to break and fall, and his arm came down; his hand moved to his buckle and his palm pressed into it. The fluid oozed between his fingers and began washing down and across his groin and thighs. And as if the buckle had been some kind of switch, as his palm pressed into it his eyes went out; they rolled back in his head, and the lids fell to cover them over. His mouth continued its effort to speak, and then it stopped doing that. Then the noise and the concentrated effort shut down, and it was very quiet.

The rain had stopped, but there was still no sun, and the sky remained uniformly dark. Allen heard the creaking and the yaw and the sound of slapping lines above, and he looked up and saw the unconscious figure hanging from the rigging between the great wings and slowly coming down. The glider turned gradually in a half circle, then caught some air, moved up a fraction as the domes in the wings filled and stretched taut like membranes, and came back around again, lowering. The man's head and arms hung loosely down, but his feet and legs were still tight together.

Allen kept his hand over Melinda's face, and when he brought his eyes down from the glider, he saw the Chair standing alone, his arms raised and his hands in fists. He was looking up at the glider, and then he looked down and back to where the second and third had come over. The third, the one with the rifle, was struggling in a gust of air, the flyer jerking at the bar for elevation.
The second was climbing, and it looked like it might make the other hill and reach the domes. It was halfway across the fairway in its climb. The Chair swung toward it, shaking his fists and yelling.

“That's enough, that's goddamned enough!” he screamed. “Stop it! Stop it! This is a golf course! “

Allen saw the little metallic glint and the movement in the small, trussed-up figure. Then the rush of air came, and the spear descended. The Chair opened his extended fists to fend it off. The force of the hit turned him back, and Allen saw the surprise in his face as the spear stuck quivering in his thigh. The Chair looked down at it, then shook his leg tentatively as if to free it. And then he backed up, limping, toward his cart; his hands were fists again, and he was shaking them and yelling at the flyer.

Costa came up from under the cart and threw his bag and body into the rear carrier as the Chair slid awkwardly into the driver's seat and hit the pedal. The cart turned, throwing Costa halfway out, and headed down the fairway. As it picked up speed, the spear began to wobble in the Chair's thigh, and he slowed down, meandering, to avoid bumps. Costa was bouncing in the carrier, but he held tight to the back of the passenger seat. They reached the dog leg in what seemed a long time, headed around it, and were out of sight.

Allen got up in reflex to follow the cart's going, but then he saw the glider, the one with the rifle in it, coming down in the fairway about fifty yards from them. It was only ten feet from the ground, and he saw the flyer's leather legs kick free of the rigging and the man hang down from his shoulders and waist, his legs dangling and dancing, his feet getting ready to hit. His hands held his weapon, but it was caught in the trussing and the straps on his sleeves, and he was jerking and moving it to get it free. Allen reached to his golf bag on the back of the cart and grabbed a club head and pulled up and out, sliding the club free. He looked around, saw Melinda's figure crouched, and behind her the flagstick and his white Golden Ram sitting on the green near it. He looked back and saw the man's feet hit and stumble, and the
tip of the right wing came down and scraped the ground. He was struggling to stand, jerking at the rifle, and he looked to be trying at the same time to get at the safety buckle that would release him from his wings.

Allen turned and ran toward the flag. He could feel that the pitch of the club head in his hand made it a four-iron. He threw the club head out and away from him as he moved, spinning the club and catching it by its grip. Approaching the ball, he had a brief, sudden urge to hood the face of the club all the way down, to make the club a putter, knock the eagle in, and finish the hole. When he got to the ball, he stopped and turned quickly into a hitting stance. He sighted down the fairway at the landed glider. The man now had his footing, and his weapon was loose in his right hand. Allen saw him reach for the safety harness, his left hand and arm across his belly. Then he threw his left arm out and away from him, and the straps of the harness fell loose. The left arm and hand came back to the rifle as the man squatted slightly, bringing the weapon to his shoulder. Allen could see the bulge of the silencer at the barrel tip as it came around. Behind the grounded flyer, the wings stood up, full of air. They began to lift slowly, rising up and tipping forward over him like some large protective umbrella.

Allen saw the drops of rain. They were gathering on the sides of his hands, along his right thumb, and a few glistened on the shaft. His hands were in his grip and well in front of the ball, the face of the four-iron hooded slightly. He looked up once and saw the red flash at the end of the barrel. Then he looked down at the ball and focused on the Go letters and the space between them and the face of the club. He saw the spatter of red drops at the base of the shaft and felt the bite in his left forearm.

Then the club shaft was rising back and up, his left fist tightening. He forced himself to stay down on the ball, to keep his left arm rigid, to cock only at the wrist. At the top of his backswing, he put all of his concentration in his left shoulder, imagining it to be a joint in a piece of heavy machinery. When the club
came down to the ball, he tried hard to literally snap and break his tendons and ligaments loose from their insertion in bone, to break his wrist with the force.

Before the club hit, he had a stab of guilt at what he was about to do to the green; he wondered if it would scream in outrage. The power in the swing carried him sideways, almost off his feet, and when the shaft came over, righting him again, it arched in its whip around his neck and hit him sharply in the right shoulder. His head came up. He saw the clean, odd slice of divot he had cut move out and up, and then he saw the man jackknife under the wings, the rifle fly up and out as the Ram hit him in the stomach. There was a sharp echoing crack down the fairway. The man was driven back five feet or more. His hands met his toes as he sat up in the air. And then he fell and the wings came down over him, and Allen could see his body lurch and squirm, hitting against his canvas covering. Then Allen felt something brush against his cheek and turned and faced the open palm. He looked up and recoiled. The man hung directly above him. He was under the wings and close to the red sticks and green wires that did not touch each other. He could hear the flyer's deep breathing, the creaking in the rigging, and he could smell the leather. He dropped down and dived and rolled. The scalloped edge of the wing caught his arm, and he jerked it loose and rolled again and came up and ran to Melinda.