“I’ll be running on,” says Ellen, reaching the door ahead of us.
“No, Ellen.” I take her arm. “I’m afraid you can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
“I want to make sure the coast is clear.”
“Very well, Chief.”
To my surprise, Ellen shrugs and perches herself — on the still-humming bed!
“You want to come with us?”
“No no. You kids run along. I’ll hold the fort. I see you have food. I’ll fix some sandwiches while you’re gone.”
“Let me show you where everything is, honey,” says Moira. The two huddle over the picnic basket.
Oh, they’re grand girls, though. Whew. What a relief to see them get along! There’s no sight more reassuring than two women working over food. Women needn’t be catty! Perhaps we three could be happy here.
“We’ll be back, Ellen!” cries Moira, yanking me after her. “If things get slow, there’s always the Gideon.”
Now why did she have to say that?
“You mean you didn’t bring your manual from Love?” laughs Ellen, waving us on our way.
“Ha ha, very good, girls,” I say, laughing immoderately. They are great girls, though. Whew. A relief nevertheless to close the door between the two of them and be on our way.
Moira was never more loving or lovable. By turns playful, affectionate, mournful, prattling, hushed, she darts ahead like a honeybee tasting the modest delights of this modest ruin.
“Do you think there’s any danger, Chico?” she calls back.
“I doubt if there’s anyone around.”
“What about Ellen’s sniper?”
“Well—”
“She spooks easy, huh?”
“No. On the contrary.”
“Do you like her?”
“She’s a fine nurse.”
“But do you like her?”
“Like?”
“Or as you say, fancy.”
“No. I fancy you.”
We’re behind the registration desk reading the names of long-departed guests, not salesmen, I notice, but families, mom and pop and the kids bound for the Gulf Coast or the Smokies or Seven Flags.
Now we’re under the moldering Rotary banner in the dark banquet room arm in arm and as silent as we were last summer at Ghost Town, U.S.A. Moira reads the banner.
Is it the Truth?
Is it fair to all concerned?
I squeeze her pliant belted rough-linened waist. The linen reminds me of Doris. Was that why I got it?
“Let’s stay here a while.” I draw her behind the banner. What an odd thing to be forty-five and in love and with exactly the same pang of longing in the heart as at age sixteen.
Moira laughs. “Let’s go get a Dr. Pepper.”
In the arcade, dim and cool as a catacomb, she skips along the bank of vending machines pulling Baby Ruth levers. Pausing in her ballet, she stoops and mock-drinks at a rusted-out watercooler.
I stoop over her, covering her, wondering why God gave man such an ache in his heart.
“You’re a lovely girl,” I say.
CoooooorangEEEEEEEE. The cinderblock at my ear explodes and goes singing off down the arcade. It seems I am blinking and looking at the gouge in the block and feeling my cheek, which has been stung by twenty mosquitoes.
CooooooRUNK. The block doesn’t sing. But I notice that a hole has appeared in the lip of the basin where the metal is bent double in a flange. I fall down on Moira, jamming her into the space between the cooler and ice machine.
“You crazy fool! Get off me! You’re killing me!”
“Shut up. Somebody is trying to kill us.”
Moira becomes quiet and small and hot, like a small boy at the bottom of pile-on. Craning up, I can see the hole in the lip of the cooler basin but not through the top hole. The second shot did not ricochet. It is possible to calculate that the shot came into the arcade at an angle and from a higher place. No doubt from a balcony room across the pool. Perhaps directly opposite the room where Ellen is.
My feet feel exposed, as if they were sticking off the end of a bed. My arms tremble from the effort of keeping my weight off Moira.
The third shot does not come.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I tell her, still covering her. “I think we can squeeze around behind the ice-maker and come out beyond the line of fire. You go first.”
Moira nods, dumb, and begins to tremble. She has just realized what has happened.
“Now!”
I follow her. We wait between Coke machine and ice-maker.
“Now!”
We break for the far end of the arcade and the rear of the motel.
Out to the weedy easement where my water hose runs from the Esso station. The elderberry is shoulder high. We keep low and follow the hose. It turns up the wall to the bathroom window.
It is an easy climb up the panel of simulated wrought-iron and fairly safe behind the huge Esso oval.
“I’ll go up first,” I tell Moira, “take a look around and signal you.”
I climb in the window and run for my revolver in the closet without even looking at Ellen, who is shouting something from the bed.
“Bolt the door, Ellen.”
Back to the bathroom to cover Moira, who is looking straight up from the elderberries, mouth open. I beckon her up.
Turn off the air-conditioner.
We three sit on the floor of the dressing room. No sound outside. Moira begins to whisper to Ellen, telling her what happened. I am thinking. Already it is hotter.
“He’s going to kill us all,” says Ellen presently. She sits cross-legged like a campfire girl, tugs her skirt over her knees. “It must be a madman.”
“A very very sick person,” says Moira, frowning.
They’re wrong. It’s worse, I’m thinking. It’s probably a Bantu from the swamp, out to kill me and take the girls. It comes over me: why, the son of a bitch is out to kill me and take the girls!
Presently the girls relax. I stand at the front window and watch the opposite balcony.
Does the curtain move?
But there is nothing to be seen, no rifle barrel.
Ellen is leafing through a directory of nationwide Howard Johnson motels. Moira is clicking her steely thumbnail against a fingernail.
Whup! Something about the revolver looks wrong. I spin the cylinder. Something is wrong. It’s not loaded. Heart sinks. What to do? Fetch my carbine. But that means leaving the girls. Then I’ll have to take the sniper with me.
I think of something.
“Where is your car parked, Ellen?”
“Beyond the restaurant.”
“Next to the fence?”
“Yes.”
“All right. Listen, girls. We can’t stay here like this — with him out there. Not for days or weeks.”
“Weeks!” cries Ellen. “What do you mean?’
“Here’s what we’re going to do. Who can shoot a pistol?”
“Not me,” says Moira.
Ellen takes the empty revolver. It’ll make them feel better.
“It’s cocked and off safety. Shoot anybody who tries to get in. If it’s me, I’ll whistle like a towhee. Like this. Now lock the bathroom window behind me. I’ll have to undo the hose.”
“What do you have in mind, Chief?” asks Ellen, all business. She’s my girl Friday again. She’s also one up on Moira.
“I’m going to get my carbine. I also have to check on my mother. Truthfully I don’t think anybody’s going to bother you here. I’m going to make a lot of noise just in case somebody’s still hanging around, and I think he’ll follow me. He’s been following me for days. Ellen, let’s check the Anser-Phones. Well stay in touch. See what you can find out about what’s going on. Sorry about the air-conditioner, but I think it’s going to rain.”