He staggered toward the ladder leading to the bridge, wanting to blow the whistle or use the p.a. system or warn the captain that the ship was being overrun by armed men, but as he walked, he realized there was no strength in his legs, his legs were giving out under him. He dropped to his knees on the deck and shouted, “Man your...” and nothing else because he fell face forward, dead, in the next instant.
“The ship is in our hands!” a voice said over the p.a. system. “We’re armed, and we’ll shoot to kill! Resist and you are dead. Resist and you are dead. Resist and you are dead.”
Book Two
11
“You’re dead!” he shouted.
“I am not!”
“I got you!”
“You didn’t get nothing!” she answered. “And I don’t want to play this stupid game.” She threw the toy rifle onto the ground, and he stood in the center of the road staring at it, his lips pursed, a look of utter exasperation on his face.
“What do you have to throw the gun down for?” he asked.
“Because it’s stupid.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re stupid,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“And the beach is stupid,” she said and giggled.
“What do you want to play, if you don’t want to play this?”
“I want to play stupid,” she said.
“How do you play stupid?”
“You just be stupid,” she said and shrugged, and giggled.
She was five years old, and he was six, and he stared at her with the eternal patience of older brothers everywhere in the world, wondering why he always had to go out and play with her after he got home from school each day, and all day Sundays. Her nose was running and her underpants were falling down, and she stood in the middle of the road just a few feet behind the rifle she had thrown down, and he looked at the rifle and then at her and thought, Boy.
“Well, what do you want to do?” he said. He was always asking her what she wanted to do, it seemed. She was just a snotty-nosed little kid, but she was the one who always decided what they were going to do. Boy, he couldn’t figure that one out.
“Let’s play Sunday,” she said.
“What’s Sunday?”
“Sunday is you put on your hat and go for a walk.”
“I don’t have a hat.”
“You put on a make-believe hat.”
“What for?”
“So we can take a walk.”
“I don’t want to take a walk.”
“Why not?”
“What was wrong with what we were playing?” he asked.
“You always shoot me,” she said.
“You can shoot me, too, you know.”
“I don’t want to shoot my own brother.”
“I’m not supposed to be your brother.”
“You are my brother.”
“I mean, in the game.”
“Put on your hat,” she said. “We’ll take a walk. Come on.”
He picked up the rifle and looked at her patiently, waiting for her to relent. She stared at him unperturbed, and then tugged at the elastic waistband of her panties, and then wiped the back of her hand across her running nose. They stood in the center of the road, staring at each other.
“Come on,” she coaxed.
“Well, I’ll go for a walk, but I’m not gonna put on no stupid hat.”
“To play Sunday, you have to put on a hat.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Papa always does. When him and Mama go for a walk, he always puts on a hat.”
“Oh, all right,” he said, “I’ll put on a damn hat.” He went through an elaborate pretense of putting an imaginary hat on his head.
“That’s very nice,” she said.
“Stop wiping your nose with your hand,” he told her.
“Come on.”
They walked up the center of the road. He held one of the toy rifles in each hand. She walked beside him, trying to keep up with his longer stride.
“What we are,” he said, “is Arabs in the middle of the Sumara Desert.”
“Where’s that?”
“Someplace, I don’t know. We don’t have any water. The camels are all dead.”
“You’re playing something else,” she said. “You’re not playing Sunday.”
“I am, too.”
“Then why are there dead camels?”
They walked for a while in silence. The water close inshore was clogged with mud and grass.
“What we are,” he said, “is the first people to land on Mars.”
“We are the first people to land on Mars!” she shouted. A spoonbill preening in the tall grass squawked at the sound of her voice. She turned to the bird and giggled, and then shouted again, “We are the first people to land on Mars!”
“You don’t even know where Mars is,” he said.
“Sure I do.”
“Where is it?”
“Someplace,” she said.
“In the desert?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
“I know,” she said.
“In the water?”
“No.”
“In the sky?”
“Of course not.”
“Ha!” he said. “It is too in the sky!”
“Ha-ha,” she said, “the moon is in the sky.”
“So’s Mars. Ask anybody.”
“There’s nobody to ask,” she said. “Show it to me. If it’s in the sky, show it to me.”
“You can’t see it. You need a telescope.”
“Make believe we have one.” She put her clenched fist to her ear and said, “Hello, this is Cynthia Griffin, let me talk to Mars bars,” and then giggled.
“It’s not Mars bars,” he said. She was still giggling. “And it’s not a telephone, it’s a telescope. It has a thing you look through.” He made his thumb and forefinger into a circle and peered through it.
“Let me see, too,” she said, and immediately pulled his hand to her eye. “Ah-ha!” she said. “Ah-ha! I see it!”
“What do you see?” he asked her, thinking there were times when she was okay, times when he almost liked her.
“I see Mars,” she said.
“How does it look?”
“It has grass and water and mud.”
“Do you see any people?”
“No. Only us.”
“We must be the only ones on the planet,” he said. “Do you see any sign of our ship?”
“What ship?”
“The rocket ship.”
“Yes,” she said, “I see a sign of the ship.”
“Where is it?”
“In the mud.”
“What does it look like?”
“It has a red light on top.”
“That’s probably the escape hatch,” he said.
“No, it’s a red light,” she answered.
“Are you sure it’s our ship?”
She suddenly pulled her eye away from his hand and looked up at him. “Jackie,” she said, “will you get mad at me?”
“What is it?”
“I can’t see our ship,” she said. “All I can see is Mr. Hogan’s car sticking out of the mud.”
Willy had driven Ginny’s car past the barricade and onto S-811, stopping at the diner to get out and identify himself to Johnny and Mac behind the closed Venetian blinds. He knew just where he wanted to take the woman, and he figured the only one who could possibly stop him was Goody Moore, who was stationed in the phone booth outside the marina office. There was a slight parting of two of the blind slats. A pair of fingers showed in the opening, wiggled themselves at him, and then disappeared. He waved at the blinds, got in behind the wheel again, and set the car in motion.