Lost Man's River(274)
Lucius, sick and dizzy, mumbled dully that the firebomb might have been a mercy to the man burning. His brother’s agonies were talons in his heart. The uselessness of Rob’s self-immolation! The Watson house would have been destroyed without him!
Only last night, under the stars at Lost Man’s Key, the death of that foredoomed old man—in the light of the alternative—had seemed an endurable idea. This was because it was just that—an idea, an abstraction, with none of the furious pain and terror of a death by fire, none of the stunning immediacy of Ad’s “hellfire,” or even of that dog-eared satchel, huddled there like a reproach on the blackened ground. To perish screaming, mouth stretched wide as a black hole, twisting like the human damned in some Black Ages painting, the descent of sinners into Hell—
His lungs brought up an ugly sound like the hard cough of a choked dog. In the blackening air he lost his sight and sank onto his knees, pressing his hands to the scorched earth to keep from sinking further into darkness. Around him dim voices came and went, hoarse incantations from the netherworlds—
Rob—one word, sepulchral, formed and vanished
Rob
Who was calling?
God have mercy
… all right?
Old pine subsumed, crack and shudder of the burning, spiral goings and returnings, the blood, the suffering of sentient things purified to the last atom by blue mineral flame, primordial ash and ancient gases, gathered in by air and water and returned at last to ocean and to earth, world without end
Amen
Rob Watson
the whispering as he came clear again, the dim shifting of specters, the black tree silhouettes on the bend of silent river
still on his knees, staring down at the blood conduits and sinews of the two gnarled hands, affixed like dragon claws to the black earth
You all right, Mister Colonel?
What’s the matter with him? What’s the matter!
Faces. Whidden Thomas Harden. Andrew Wiggins House. Sally Daniels Brown Harden. Addison Watson Burdett.
What’s the matter?
Lucius struggled to stand up. When the Hardens sought to support him under the arms, he shook them off, only to relapse onto hands and knees. Kneeled on all fours, letting the blackness fade, he watched a drop fall from his eyes to strike a tiny crater in the ash.
Ad whimpered. He had burned his leg. All stared at the red burn on the pale and hairy slab as he pulled aside his poor charred shreds of pant leg.
Brother, we cannot kiss your wound. We cannot make it well.
Lucius straightened slowly and sat back upon his heels, trying to clear his head, as Addison, in fits and starts, finished his story—how the helicopter had returned, how it came in low and hovered as he sank into the green water, fingers clinging to rough places in the cistern wall.
“Taking official pictures for their official damn report.” Whidden was still piecing it together. By now, he guessed, the helicopter crew must have noticed that the only boat at Chatham Bend was that empty skiff on the far bank.
“Seeing no boats, they probably assumed that nobody was in the house,” Lucius suggested, wondering why he needed to excuse them.
The helicopter had swung off toward the north and descended slowly until it disappeared behind the trees. Certain it had landed, Ad was terrified he had been seen, that these unknown enemies would come in on foot to hunt him down. Even when the thing rose again over the trees and headed back toward the east, and he crawled out into the hot sun, stinking with slime, he remained crouched beside the tarn until he heard the Cracker Belle, coming upriver.
Lucius wanted to stay long enough to retrieve his brother’s body from the embers. Although they had no more food and little water, Whidden nodded. He did not have to say that as boat captain, he was responsible for their safety, and that the sooner they got away from here, the better. As the humid afternoon wore on, he became more and more restless, certain that the helicopter would return.
The housepainter, in choked fits and muffled starts, emptied out his fifty years of throttled feelings.
A week earlier in Neamathla, when he’d learned from Lucius that this house might be burned, Ad had rushed away from his sister’s place feeling hugely angry and upset, though why or against whom he did not know. For the first time in years, he returned to heavy drinking, raging away at strangers and bar mirrors that E. J. Watson and the Watson Place had nothing to do with Addison Burdett. Sobered by a rude arrest for disorderly conduct, he took his savings from the bank and left next day for the Ten Thousand Islands, telling nobody, not even Ruth Ellen. “Why? Who knows why?” Ad grumbled. “Because I’m some kind of a misfit and a crank, and always have been!” He struggled to pretend this was a joke, and Lucius chuckled as best he could to help him out, but the fraternal moment failed, and they plodded onward.