“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yes.”
“Your eye is opening. Now, Chief.”
“Yes.”
“We have to be clear on one or two things.”
“Right,” I say, cheering up. I’ve always taken delight in her orderly mind.
“First. Do you intend to marry?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t.”
“Do you want me to stay with you?”
“Yes.”
Why do I take such delight in answering her questions? I remind me of Samantha, who used to come home from school letter-perfect in her catechism and ask me to hear her nevertheless.
“Why did God make you?” And she’d answer, faking a hesitation, slewing her eyes around to me to gauge the suspense. She liked for me to ask and for her to answer. Saying is different from knowing.
“Are we going to go back to work?” asks Ellen.
“Yes.”
I look at my watch.
Ellen takes a damp washrag and scrubs my mouth with hard mother-scrubs.
“Tch, of all the shameless hussies.” She scrubs mother-hard with no mercy for my lip. “My word!” She grabs my shirt.
“What now?”
“They even pulled your shirttail out.” Hard tucks all around.
“Thank you.” The sugar in the toddy is reviving me.
“Now. What are the plans?” “Here are the plans. In five minutes, as soon as I finish my drink, I’m going over to the high ground of the interchange. I’m taking the carbine and I’ll be within sight and range of this balcony and these windows. From that point I can also see the swamp, the Center, the town, and Paradise. I know what to look for. It should happen by seven o’clock. If you need me here, wave this handkerchief in the window. And shoot anybody else who tries to come in.”
“Right, Chief.”
“After I leave, you can collect the others and bring them in here.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll blow their noses and tuck them in. We’ve handled worse, haven’t we?”
“Yes.” I look at her. “And, Ellen.”
“Yes?”
“You won’t leave without telling me?”
“No. But wait.”
“What for?”
“I’m going to fix you a sandwich to take with you to keep your strength up.”
“Where are they?”
“Who?”
“The girls.”
“Next door — in Miss ah Rhoades’s room. All of a sudden they’re thick as thieves.”
“Hm,” I say uneasily. What are they cooking up between them?
In a pine grove on the southwest cusp of the interstate cloverleaf
7:15 P.M. / JULY 4
AWAKE AND FEELING MYSELF AGAIN, which is to say, alert, depressed-elated, and moderately terrified.
My leg has gone to sleep. One eye is closed either by sleep or by hives. Albumen molecules dance in my brain.
It is almost dark, but the sky is still light. The dark crowns of the cypresses flatten out against the sky like African veldt trees. A pall of smoke hangs over the horizon, marring the glimmering violet line that joins dark earth to light bowl of sky. The evening star glitters like a diamond next to the ruby light of the transmitter.
No sign of a sniper.
Three windows are lit at Howard Johnson’s. The girls then are safe and sound and waiting for me.
Closer at hand a smaller column of smoke is rising. It is coming from a bunker off number 12 fairway which runs along the fence bordering the interstate right-of-way. The links lights are on, sodium-vapor arcs concealed in cypresses and Spanish moss, which cast a spectral light on the fairway and big creeping shadows in the rough.
Two police cars are parked on the shoulder. A small crowd stands around the bunker, gazing down.
Forgetting about my leg, I shoulder the carbine, stand up to start down the slope, and fall down. The exposed leg between shoved-up pants and fallen-down socks is ghostly and moon-pocked. I touch it. It feels like meat in the refrigerator.
I wait until the tingling comes and goes.
The smoke is coming from the sandtrap under the bunker. Charley Parker, the golf pro, stands watering the sand with a hose.
P.G.A. officials run back and forth between Charley and his official tower, which also holds camera crews and floodlights. Players watch from their carts. One player, swinging his sand wedge, stands beside the bunker.
There are people from the Center and town. I recognize Max Gottlieb, Stryker, a Baptist chiropractor named Dr. Billy Matthews; Mercer Jones, a state trooper; Dr. Mark Habeeb, a Center psychiatrist; Elroy McPhee, a Humble geologist and a moderate Episcopal Knothead; Moon Mullins, a Catholic slumlord and Pontiac dealer.
“What do you say, Doc,” says Charley as if we were teeing off on an ordinary Sunday morning. But I notice that his hand is trembling and his jaw muscles pop.
“All right, Charley. What are you doing?”
“Do you hear what that goddamn P.G.A. official said to me?”
“No.”
“He said there was no rule in the book to cover this so I have to put the fire out.”
“No rule to cover what?”
“A ball in a burning sand trap.”
“Is that what’s holding up the game?”
“I got to put the son of a bitch out!”
“I don’t believe I’d do that.”
“Do what?”
“Put water on it. It will only make it worse.”
“I got to put it out. The sand is on fire.”
“How could the sand be on fire? It’s a Heavy Sodium reaction, Charley.”
“What would you do about it?”
“Clear the area. The smoke contains Heavy Sodium vapor and could be extremely dangerous, especially if a wind should spring up.”
Charley makes a sound. With the thumb and forefinger of his free hand he flings something — tears? — from his eyes.
“What’s wrong, Charley?”
“What’s wrong,” repeats Charley. He gazes sorrowfully at the sand trap into which he directs the stream from the hose in an idle ruminative way, like a man pissing into a toilet. “The greatest event that ever happened to this town, to this state, the Pro-Am, gets to the finals, forty million people are watching on stereo-V, nine out of the top ten all-time money-winners and crowd-pleasers are on hand, half a million in prize money has been raised, the evangelistic team has arrived, the President himself plans to play a round tomorrow — and what happens? The goddamn bunkers catch on fire.”
“You mean more than one?”
“All of them, man!”
“That figures,” I say absently. “Charley, it’s not the sand that’s burning and the water will only—”
“Don’t tell me the sand is not burning!” cries Charley, dashing tears from his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Look!”
Fortunately a brisk breeze from the north is blowing the smoke straight out to the swamp.
“Mercer, do you have a bullhorn in your car?” I ask the state trooper.
“What do you want with a bullhorn, Doc?” asks Mercer in the easy yet wary tone of an experienced policeman who is both at his ease in an emergency and prepared for any foolishness from spectators.
“I’ve got to warn these people about the smoke. Will you help me clear the area?”
“Why do you want to do that?” asks Mercer, inclining his head toward me carefully.
“Because it contains noxious sodium particles, and if the wind should shift, we could have a disaster on our hands.”
“We have oxygen in case of smoke inhalation, Doc.” Mercer looks at me sideways. He is wondering if I am drunk.
Stifling an impulse to recite the symptoms of Heavy Sodium fallout, I adopt the acceptable attitude of friend-of-policeman encountering policeman on duty and accordingly line up alongside him.