Guns [John Hardin 01] (13 page)

He woke briefly in the early afternoon to take a long drink of water and more aspirin, and Hank helped him use the cake pan.

When he woke up again it was dark. Outside the smudged window, bright stars were tangled in the trees and way off there was the lazy regular wink-flash of the Ocracoke lighthouse. He had a heavy black feeling that there was something terribly wrong over there and his mind shied away from it. He had drawn them away from the island. They must think they had killed him, and they had no reason to harm anyone else over there. They had to be long gone. Valerie and Joshua would be missing him and would be worried. They would think he’d just left the island in a hurry for some reason, he thought with a nervous hollowness, for some emergency, and would be waiting to hear from him, but he could make up for all of that.

Hattie set a hissing lantern on his bedside table and made him a supper of a large golden-fried flounder and fried bread with molasses, with canned peaches and a Mountain Dew. He ate every morsel of it and had another long drink of cool sweet rain water. If he had any fever left it could not be much.

After Hank and Hattie had eaten, they came in and sat with him. Hank said, “You feel up to a little music, son?”

Sam nodded, so Hank went out and came back with his violin case.

The instrument looked old, the grainy wood burnished in the lantern light. Around its bridge there was a powdery patch of rosin. Hank plucked the strings and tuned it by ear, then tightened up the age-discolored horsehair bow and drew it briskly across a small grooved rosin cake several times.

“Play ‘Blue Eyes in The Rain’,” Hattie said. “That one is so pretty to me.”

Hank rested the back of the fiddle on his chest and sat erect in the straight chair. Hattie leaned her head back and got the rocker moving slightly. Hank drew the bow deftly across the strings, making them vibrate and setting the old wood to resonating richly, his scuffed boot toe tapping out the time, his weathered bent fingers pressing with sureness on the slim neck of the instrument, Hattie’s small palm tapping the rocker arm softly in unison. He and Hattie sang in a harmony tuned to perfection from long practice, and Sam watched them and listened to the old song. He hadn’t heard anybody else do it better.

Hank played a lively “Turkey in The Straw", double-stringing most of it, and then a haunting “Red River Valley".

“Here’s one you ought to know, son. And you can sing right along if you’re up to it. I call it ‘Me and My Hattie McGee’.”

Hattie said, “I surely wish you had your guitar, Roy.” She smiled and closed her eyes, rocking slowly.

Hank plucked the strings, using the pegs to fine-tune them, and then began singing Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee", substituting “Hattie McGee” for Bobby, and Sam soon joined in weakly.

Hank gestured toward Hattie with his head. She was dozing off, her head canted on a thin pillow tied to the rocker back. He played “Love Can Build a Bridge” softly, not singing, then sat there with the fiddle resting on his knee.

“When I look at her now, son,” he said quietly, “or when we’re out in the shallows clammin’ and she’s got her skirt tied up above her knees and her straw hat on, I don’t see all the years on her. I see her like she was forty years ago. It’s the same spark in her blue eyes and the same way she carries herself and the same good light in her voice. That woman there has stuck with me goin’ on fifty years now, like I really was somebody. When I never was.”

Hank put the violin up on his chest again and played “Tennessee Waltz". Watching her sleep.

Sam closed his eyes and saw the ghosts of Portsmouth town standing out there among the trees listening.

Smiling contentedly to themselves because their island was alive once again.

If only for a while.

15

W
HEN SAM CAME AWAKE AT DAWN HE SAW HANK ASLEEP
in the straight chair, his head on his shoulder and his arms folded. In his right hand he held a big squarish automatic pistol. Sam stirred, trying to raise his upper body and awkwardly stuff a pillow back there as a prop. Hank started and woke up abruptly, looking around.

Sam nodded at the gun and said, “What’s that for?”

Hank said in a lowered voice, “You talk in your sleep, son. I know you’ve got some men after you. I never did tell Hattie but that rut along your hip looked like a bullet track whenever I first saw it, and then it matched up with the hole in your jeans. Took a chunk out of your belt, too. I don’t know what your trouble is, son, but I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

“I have to go back to Ocracoke, Hank. A woman and her son are over there. They’re my good friends and they don’t know where I am. They’ll be worried sick. But nobody else should know I’m here. It could be bad for them.”

“You ought not to go anywhere for a while,” Hank said, not looking him in the eyes. “Hattie and I done all we can for you. I don’t believe there’s a hospital could do much more except charge you about a thousand a day. You’re healin’ just fine, Hattie says, and she knows. Hattie, she’s dropped ten years off. Smiles in her sleep again. It’s good to see. Yessir, the best thing you can do is stay right there and rest.”

“Hank, you don’t understand. I…”

“No, son. Now that’s the last I’ll hear of it today. We’ll give it a week or so and then we’ll talk.” The old man’s expression was determined.

Sam studied him for a moment. He said, “That’s an Army forty-five you have there, isn’t it?”

“Colt model nineteen and eleven. Still one of the best side arms there ever was, I expect.” He looked down at it. The bluing was worn off in several places but it looked clean and oiled. The old man’s voice took on a faraway tone. “This one saved my life. It was all I had left when a Jap carryin’ a rifle with a bayonet on it caught me in a flooded ditch-bank. This gun was coated in mud but it fired when I needed it to. It saved my life.”

“What was it like for you? That war.”

“Something you don’t ever forget, hard as you might try. Bunch of us was in Guadalcanal. They wanted volunteers so I signed on. We got secret orders and went to Bombay. Mountbatten himself inspected us there. We was led by General Frank G. Merrill. Not what you’d expect in a general. He wasn’t a big man, wore glasses, didn’t speak loud, but he damned sure had sand. He took three thousand of us into Burma from Ledo, India. We had American Japanese with us. And Gurkhas. You don’t ever want to square off against no Gurkha, son. Some of the best fighters I ever saw. We used mules for pack animals and it’s sure right what they say about how stubborn those damned animals can be.

“It was supposed to be for three months but it dragged on to twice that. They needed to clear out Burma enough to get supplies through to the Chinese. I didn’t know a man could be so scared for so long. Or so wet and dirty. It was the worst at night. They called us Merrill’s Marauders. Besides all the Japs there was cholera, malaria, scrub typhus, beriberi, dysentery. Eight out of ten of us got bad dysentery, but we still fought like the devil. Had a fight at Shaduzup and by then a lot of us had took bad sick or been killed or wounded. We were tuckered out for sure, but we took the air strip at Myitkyina, and by then there was only a hundred of us left on our feet, and I was so bad off I could hardly pick up my carbine. Merrill had his second heart attack and they disbanded us in August of forty-three. Merrill went on back to New England and did alright after the war. Some said later we was one of the most heroic units in World War Two. I don’t know about that. I just know when you’re so scared you go all hollow inside and you watch a buddy not twenty-one yet in a stinking dirty red puddle twitch like a rabbit and try to hold his guts in and holler for his momma you don’t feel like no hero. You just feel sick to your soul. But we always had our pride, no matter what. We might not be no saints, we said, but we damned sure was the Marauders. That was all a long, long time ago, son. Nobody cares now.”

“What happened to Roy, Hank?”

In a subdued, barely audible voice he said, “He was a hand on a big trawler. One of the toughest, most dangerous jobs a man can have, I guess. I was worried for him, but proud, you know? He was makin’ good money and savin’ it up toward his own boat. Not pissin’ it away like a lot of them. Got caught in a bad storm way out over the Grand Banks. Waves to fifty feet and more they said, enough to make even a good-sized boat pitch-pole or roll right over on her beam. All they ever found was some extra diesel barrels that’d been lashed to the deck. Hattie never gave up hope. It wasn’t like Roy died. He just disappeared. And even when you know better you always kind of hope there’ll be a letter or a phone call some day and it will be him. Hattie, she just never was the same after it. Until now.”

“How did you two meet?”

He brightened. “Not a fancy story. It was after the war. I come to Pendleton down in South Carolina to visit my uncle.”

They heard Hattie come in the front door, shuffling toward the bedroom. Hank quickly got the gun out of sight, jamming it behind his belt at his back, and raised his voice. “My aunt introduced Hattie to me in October of fifty-one. We went to a country fair. Stayed until it closed. She just couldn’t resist my charms, I guess. I got a job helpin’ build houses for GIs around Wilmington, and we ain’t never looked back. But I know you heard all this before, Roy.”

“What lies is he telling you, Roy?” Hattie said with a smile as she entered the room. She came over and rested a palm against Sam’s forehead, nodding with satisfaction. “The fact is, I felt sorry for the man. I knew there was no other girl anywhere in this world who was likely to have him.”

“Wasn’t no other girl in this world I wanted, anyway,” Hank said, grinning.

“First we’ll see about getting a good breakfast into you, Roy. Then we’ll change those bandages. I’m going to clean and mend your clothes today. Hank, you’ll give him a sponge bath. Fresh sheets and pillowcases. Roy, I’ll have to cut your blue jeans so they’ll fit over that leg splint but I can sew them back up later. You’ll need a warm jacket so I’ll fit one of Hank’s for you and maybe a sweater, too. Hank, you might as well set about making some crutches for him today so he’ll be able to get around. Soon as possible there’s no reason you can’t be up and moving a little, Roy. You don’t want your muscles to weaken any more.”

Both men said, “Yes, ma’am.”

By the afternoon of the next day the weather had turned cold, windy, and cloudy. Hank brought in a pair of crutches made from forked tree saplings. They had been crafted with care, the ends of the wood cut cleanly, chamfered, and sanded or scraped so there were no splinters, and the forks padded evenly with wrapped-on rags. Hank helped him dress in his clean salt-stiff clothes and a warm jacket that Hattie had let out for him. Hank tied on his sneakers for him and then Sam, aching all over, managed to get himself up off of the bed and onto the crutches unsteadily. His head felt light and airy but after a moment that passed.

Hank said, “You gonna be okay there, son?”

Sam smiled and nodded, taking an experimental step. The crutches worked well, sized to fit him perfectly. After a minute he made it out into what had once been the living room of the house and saw the sleeping bags rolled out near the far wall.

He said, “Dammit, Hank, I’ve been using your bed, haven’t I? You just have these two rooms fixed up, don’t you. The rest is closed off.” Two doors leading off of the room were closed. Along one wall there was an old walnut wardrobe beside three stacks of shelving that the old man had obviously put up to store all their belongings and provisions neatly. There was a stack of wood—mostly pieces of driftwood and broken-up old gray boards—for the stove. There was a small table. The floor had been swept clean.

“Not a problem, son. Hattie and I like it out here by the stove, anyway, and them bags that we already borrowed in case it gets real cold are comfortable. You can even zip ‘em together, you want to, make one big bag. Been tryin’ to convince Hattie that’d be the thing to do. Conserve on body heat, I figure.”

Hattie came in the front door, a sweater and a light jacket over her dress, a scarf tied around her head, and her nose pink from the cold. Hank had the stove crackling well and the room was pleasantly warm.

Sam sat down heavily in a mended straight chair. He said, “Okay, you two. Listen to me. Tonight I will take one of those sleeping bags and you will take your bed back. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

Hattie said, “But, Roy, how will you get up and down with your crutches?”

“I’ll manage. I can use this chair to help me, and I need the exercise, anyway. No arguments about it. Flutter, is that a pot of your famous magic tea on that old stove?”

She smiled and scurried to get him a cup.

He took a short walk outside that day, until Hattie sent Hank to retrieve him so she could inspect his bandages and make sure he still had no fever. While Hattie herself was outside later, Hank gave Sam his wallet back. “I dried everything in it,” he said. “Hung it all on a wire where Hattie wouldn’t see it.”

Sam checked it over. His pilot’s and driver’s licenses were laminated and had suffered no real damage but they would be no good to him any more, anyway. There were fifty-seven dollars in water-damaged bills. He made Hank take the money. “Use it to get some of the things on Hattie’s list,” he said.

That night Hattie fixed them a big supper starting with sliced carrots and lettuce followed by corn pancakes with honey and maple syrup, and canned pears, with skillet gingerbread for dessert, and they all sat together at the table. Then Hank got out his fiddle and they sang some ballads, two or three Christmas carols, and two old hymns that Sam thought he had long forgotten. Sam drifted off in one of the sleeping bags as Hank was stoking the stove up for the night.

Over the next two days Sam spent longer periods hobbling around outside on the crutches. The long cuts on his head had crusted over and no longer hurt. His ribs, hip, and leg were painful but healing well, he knew, and he could feel some of his old strength returning as Hattie fed him her simple hearty meals. He spent some time doing curls with a full water jug and squeezing a short length of two-by-two in each of his fists. He found he could use one crutch and bring in small armloads of wood to replenish the stack, and he helped Hank better secure the rain tarp, rigging it so it would capture a little more water from the low-eaved roof. He washed the windows that they were using in the house.

On the morning of the twelfth day he’d been on Portsmouth he walked slowly on the crutches beside Hank along what had once been the main sandy lane of the town, now mostly overgrown with brush and grasses, Hank pointing out the tiny boarded-up post office, the ruin of the single store, and a cottage where he and Hattie had found several useful and repairable items, such as Hattie’s rocker.

Later he asked Hank if there was a pencil and paper he could use and Hank got a ballpoint and a spiral pad for him. While Hank and Hattie were out on the sound in a chilly breeze tending the crab pots, Sam sat at the table and wrote them a long letter, trying to thank them, albeit grossly inadequately he felt, for saving his life, for all they had done, telling them he would send the skiff back to them within a day, that their secret was safe with him, and that he would come back to see them when he could.

He had changed his mind about going right back to Ocracoke. If word got out he was still alive it could endanger the people over there again and he couldn’t stand the thought of that. He would get in touch with Valerie discreetly, meet her somewhere, and tell her all of it. When he got to the mainland he would call Bo Brinson and ask him to tow the skiff back to Portsmouth, swearing him to secrecy about him and about the Gaskills. When the letter was done he read it over, signed it Roy, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket.

He went to sleep early that night and awoke well before dawn. He dressed quietly, left the letter on the table, and eased out the door. A gibbous moon was making a high thin layer of cloud glow like old lace, and the light breeze was clean and cold. He struck out through the shadows for the Coast Guard dock, placing the crutch tips carefully.

He was standing by the dock propped on his crutches figuring how best to untie the skiff and get into it when behind him in the darkness Hank said, “I got somethin’ better than that right here, son.”

He turned around. Hank moved closer, holding something out in his hand. It was a cell phone. “The man over in Sealevel loaned this to us,” Hank said. “Wanted us to have it if there’s an emergency. I got extra batteries for it. He swaps batteries for fresh-charged ones whenever we get over there.”

Sam found himself hoping he could meet the old couple’s benefactor over in Sealevel one day and shake that man’s hand.

“Got a flashlight here, too. Why don’t you sit on the dock there and call who you like. I’ll take a walk.”

“No, Hank. You stay here.” He used the phone to call the number Bo had given him. Lucinda Brinson answered with sleep in her voice.

He said in a gruff tone, “Is Bo there?”

“A minute. Hey, Beaufort,” she said loudly, “it’s somebody for you don’t give a damn what time it is. Get your butt up, boy.”

In about thirty seconds Bo said, “Yeah.”

“Listen, Bo. Don’t let on who this is. It’s important that only you know about this.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Bo said, then lowering his voice, “You just disappeared, man. Where the hell are you?”

“I’m on Portsmouth Island. I need a couple of big favors.”

“You say ‘em, I’ll do what I can.”

“Do you know where the old Coast Guard dock is?”

“Sure do.”

“Can you pick me up in your boat, then drive me to Raleigh? And Bo, you can’t tell a soul about it. This time it’s life or death.”

“Give me three hours from now. I got to cancel what Spud and me had planned, and gas up. I’ll be in the skimmer. How are you dressed?”