The Cartoonist (7 page)

A half-hour had gone by. Bob had suggested they call an ambulance, but Scott vetoed the idea, insisting between sputters and coughs that he was fine, he just needed to rest. Krista had dressed his injured leg with snug-fitting gauze and Fred had gone upstairs to brew some tea. Scott had tried sipping his—he’d needed Krista to hold the cup for him, his trembling fingers still useless—but he’d vomited immediately, dry, gut-ripping heaves.

Outside, the sky had darkened to the color of slate, and now the first spits of rain dappled the patio flagstones. In the gathering squall the birches and spruce stirred restlessly, as if trying to flee their roots. In the hazy distance, thunder grumbled like an empty belly.

Scott lay on the hideaway bed in the rec room, cocooned in a comforter that reeked of mothballs and cedar. Krista sat next to him on one side, Kath on the other. Kath looked pale beneath her summer tan, and her eyes were too bright. She was in shock, Scott realized, and even through his own discomfort he was deeply disturbed by it. Bob and Fred stood between the hideaway and the color TV, decked out like
Field & Stream
centerfolds. The two old gents looked uncomfortable there, oddly out of place. Fred shuffled in his gum boots. Bob chewed nervously on his pipe.

Now Bob removed the pipe from his mouth, and as he spoke, he tamped a thumb into its empty bowl. “Our part was luck, Scott.” He pointed at Kath with the stem of his pipe. “It was your girlie there. She’s the one saved you.”

Scott touched Kath’s waist and she jumped, startling back from some gloomy place in her mind. She tried a smile but couldn’t quite manage it. After a moment her eyes went glassy again.

Frightened by Scott’s first dive, Kath had stood breathless vigil following his second, waiting for him to resurface. When the camera bobbed up in a rush of air bubbles, she realized something was wrong and began yelling for help. The fishermen had already docked over at Bob’s and were just climbing out of the boat. In response to Kath’s screams, they hopped back aboard and gunned the motor full throttle, cutting across the short stretch of open water between Anderson’s place and the Bowmans’.

“If she hadn’t piped up when she did...” Bob said, letting his words trail off. He clapped his partner on the back. “It was old Fred here thought of draggin’ that anchor.”

Grinning sheepishly, Fred looked down at his boots. “Did you get stuck down there, Scotty?” he said. “On the bottom?”

Scott nodded and the nod turned to a brief convulsion. Feeling it, Krista hugged him closer. Even Kath came back from that dark place in her mind long enough to stroke Scott’s quivering arm.

Between still-labored breaths, Scott did his best to describe to his rescuers the horror of his last dive. Then he fell silent.

Bob placed a hand on Fred’s shoulder, indicating Scott with a thrust of his chin. Scott was still shivering, but his eyes were trying hard to close. He was physically exhausted, a condition Bob Anderson understood only too well. He had experienced it himself more than once in his lifetime, after sixteen hours of farm work under a punishing, mid-July sun.

“Let’s get along,” he said to his friend, and Fred nodded grimly.

“Thanks again,” Scott mumbled as the two old-timers let themselves out.

Then his head was on the pillow, heavier than he’d ever known it, and a welcome darkness was falling. As the first spreading web of electricity shattered the vexed summer sky, Scott slid willingly into that darkness. He slept fitfully through the storm that raged through the balance of that morning, then well into the afternoon.

* * *

He awakened with a muffled shout, feeling the clutch of the lake at his throat. But it was only a pillow he’d dragged across his face while he slept, its feathery weight triggering the hideous dream-illusion of drowning. Hearing his cry, Krista came stomping down the carpeted staircase, calling his name in alarm.

“I’m all right,” Scott said, his voice thick and low. “Scared myself, is all.” He rolled over onto his side, then tried shifting to a sitting position.

It wasn’t until then that he realized how much damage had been done during his brief underwater struggle. Sometime during the inactive hours of his sleep, gravel-laced cement had been mysteriously deposited inside his joints and had hardened there. Muscles everywhere shrieked in an almost audible chorus of agony. When he leaned over to push himself up off the bed, his abdominal muscles bunched into an exquisite cramp. To relieve it, he had to have Krista draw his legs out straight. Finally, with Krista’s help, he perched on the edge of the bed, where he began a grim personal inventory.

The stiff and tender muscles proved to be much the least of it. The pain had worked its way right into his bones. With the slightest movement came the feeling that jagged metal filings had been packed into each moving part. His spine was a jouster’s lance, driven down through the top of his head and out through his tail. His leg throbbed beneath Krista’s snug dressing. His hip was a stiff and tender swelling: with his last effort to free himself, Scott had torn the joint capsule and some of the surrounding muscle fibers, an injury he knew would engage him in annoying, damp-weather conversation for years to come. As well, the circulation had not yet returned to his limbs; they were still cadaverous-looking and cold. His fingers hurt. His toes hurt. His teeth hurt...even his scalp hurt.

He moaned.

Krista became mothering and he let her.

“Oh, you poor thing,” she cooed. “That must have been horrible.” She stroked his stubbled cheek. “I didn’t know what to think when I heard Kath screaming like that. I thought she’d hurt herself or something. Her friend Lita ran off like a scared rabbit.” She hugged him closer and he winced. “Thank heaven you’re all right. Do you want anything? Something to eat or drink? How’s your tummy feel?”

Scott smiled, discovering that those muscles hurt, too. Krista was in a low-grade state of panic, and Scott imagined that if someone were to slam a door behind her just now, she really would leap out of her skin.

“My throat hurts from coughing, hon,” he said. “I don’t think I could swallow much yet. I’d like to get upstairs, though.”

Krista helped him to his feet. His head spun and the room wowed a little, but then everything was all right again. His feebleness as he negotiated the steps, leaning hard against Krista on one side and the banister on the other, made him think again of the Cartoonist, of that old and wizened body.

And that made him think of the Minolta.

At the top of the steps, where the hallway gave an angled view of the living room, Scott saw Kath sitting on her haunches in front of the
Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour
. He saw, too, that her eyes were not on the screen but on her hands, which lay in a slowly writhing knot in her lap. Startled by her parents’ approach, she snapped her head around, giving a wan smile as they shifted cautiously into the room.

Professionally, Scott recognized his daughter’s behavior as a manifestation of severe emotional trauma. During the three or four minutes of Scott’s battle against drowning, Kath had for the first time in her life experienced terror, that purest of all emotions; and like a junkie after a fix, she was still coming down from it. Though Kath’s reaction worried him, he believed he knew how she was feeling. Terror had pushed him to the very rim of sanity down there at the bottom of the lake.

“I’ll lie here on the couch awhile,” he said. “I want to visit with my girl.” Kath helped her mother lower Scott to the couch.

“Sure I can’t get you anything?” Krista said again, once Scott was stretched out and covered.

“I’m okay,” he said. “Really.” Then, trying inexpertly to sound casual, he added: “Did anyone pick up the camera?”

“What camera?” Krista said, shaking her head.

“I forgot,” Kath murmured, looking both guilty and forlorn.

“What were you doing down there, anyway?” Krista said.

Not wanting to explain the real reason, which seemed pretty far-out in the face of what had happened, Scott fibbed. “Nothing, really. I just took a notion to try out the Minolta. There were some sunfish down there, in around the weeds. I was trying to get off a few shots. Would you mind having a look for it? The camera, I mean?”

“Okay, Professor Cousteau,” Krista said. “Anything to please.” She kissed him lightly on the forehead. “I’m just so glad you’re all right.” Smiling broadly, she left him alone with their daughter.

Scott patted the edge of the couch with his hand. “Come sit over here,” he said with affection. Kath obeyed, but in a dazed, automatic way. He drew her close and kissed her on the cheek. Her skin felt feverish against his lips.

“I’m okay now, sweetheart,” he said, and Kath’s mouth quivered as she bit back tears. “I really am. And Bob was right, you know. I’ve got you to thank for it.” The quiver became the beginnings of a smile...but a lone tear appeared, coursed quickly down her cheek and then fell. It landed on the back of Scott’s hand.

“Are you really okay, Daddy?” Kath said, more tears brimming now.

“Okay as ever.”

Kath hugged him then, suddenly, viciously, painfully, and let the tears come in great sobbing rushes. Still shivering, Scott did his best to console her.

* * *

Wearing one of Scott’s windbreakers like a cape, Krista trod barefoot down the hill to the lake, being careful not to slip on the rain-beaded grass. The sky, which had cleared enough to allow the sun to wink briefly through, was lowering again, and the air was beginning to stir. As she stepped onto the dock, Krista heard the chop and chuckle of water under her feet, and drew the jacket more snuggly around her. The morning’s insanity had temporarily short-circuited her capacity for thought, and it took her a few blank moments to recall why she’d come back down here in the first place.

The camera.

Questions bobbed up in her mind as she toured the outer edge of the dock, looking down, watching for a bright yellow flash.
Sunfish?
a voice kept repeating.
Why would he go down there after sunfish?
But there were no answers, only the dry electric hum of relief and the phantom weight of her terror.

She’d almost given up when she spotted it, snagged in the half-submerged branches of a willow at the western edge of their property, bobbing like the questions in her mind. She had to wade in past her knees to retrieve it, soaking her jeans but not caring. She scooped it up and shoved it directly into a pocket, disturbed by its flat yellow glare in the light of the coming squall.

When she got back from the lake, Krista found her daughter and husband asleep on the couch. They stayed that way for another hour. By then the morning storm had come full circle, returning more heavily armed than before, and a thunderclap brought the two of them awake with identical, startled cries.

“WHO ARE YOU CALLING?”

It was ten-thirty and they were in bed, Scott propped against the headboard, Krista angled toward the phone with the receiver in her hand. Kath was asleep in her room. Scott had taken some Valium before crawling into bed. The drug would do nothing for the pain, he knew, but he thought it might help him nod off...and for what ailed him now, rest was the only cure.

“I’m calling Caroline,” Krista said. “I tried her this afternoon, but there was no answer. I want to warn her that Kath and I won’t be coming to Boston this weekend.”

“Why not?” Scott said...but he knew.

“You know why not. I can’t leave you alone like this.”

“Listen, Kris,” Scott said. “Hang up the phone and talk to me for a minute, will you?” She did. “There’s no reason for you not to go. I’m fine now. I’m going to ache for a few days, but that’ll be all. I’ll have Steve Franklin take a look at my hip on Monday—”

“You’re not going in to work on Monday,” Krista cut in, nearly shouting. “Cripes, Bowman, I can’t believe you. Here you are nearly drowned and already you’re thinking about work?” There was some real anger flaring now. “I thought if anything you’d take the week off, maybe even fly down to Boston on Tuesday if you were feeling better.”

So that was it.

“I didn’t say anything about work,” Scott said. “If I feel even half this rough on Monday, I won’t be going in to work. All I said was I’d like to have Steve take a look at my hip.” Steve Franklin, a friend of Scott’s, was an orthopedic surgeon. “I can’t take the week off, hon. We’ve already been through this. There’s just too much going on.”

He pulled her close against only a cursory resistance. “Wait until tomorrow before you decide, okay? Call Caroline now if you must, but tell her you’ll be getting in on schedule. You can still have a great time together. All right?” Krista allowed him a begrudging nod. “I’ll have Gerry over if I need any help, but I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s only sore muscles.” He grinned. “Anyway, I’ll be giving myself a nice Budweiser anesthetic all day tomorrow...no need to fret over me.”

Uncharmed but at least resigned, Krista turned and made her call. Afterward, she fell asleep that way, with her back to Scott.

* * *

By midnight the Valium Scott had taken was finally hitting home. He wasn’t asleep, but a dull sort of mental and physical numbness had crept over him; under the circumstances, he supposed it passed for relaxation. Krista lay snoozing beside him, restless, probably dreaming. From the hallway leading to Kath’s room came only silence. The house was asleep again.

Outside, like a river, ran a low and choppy wind, the dying exhalations of the storm. In those erratic last breaths, the sheers belled and twisted before the open north window. Every once in a while the metal dock joiners moaned lonesomely, and from somewhere out on the lake a loon gave an answering cry.

But Scott heard none of these sounds. The waves...he heard only the waves. Rolling, breaking, brushing the barrels, caressing the shoreline like practiced fingertips, strumming, reaching up... The sound made him think of the weeds, their swaying death dance, and he listened compulsively to the rhythm, its hypnotic symmetry.

Gradually, lulled by it, he dropped into sleep.

At the bottom of his descent was a pool of black water, and he entered it feet-first...but it wasn’t water, it was quicksand, a foul and sucking quagmire, and he was in it up to the waist, sinking fast. Around him spread a formless green gray, a mist so thick it might have been liquid.