The Glory Hand (24 page)

Thank God the phone went dead before he had to answer her with 7
love you, too
.' As he hung up the receiver, the only emotion he felt was the compulsion to return to work.

He headed towards the door, but realized that if he was going to hole up in the cabin, he would need supplies. The shelves of the general store were stocked with moldy cartons and rusty cans, as if the grocer knew his customers had nowhere else to go. In his haste, Jake didn't bother searching for the one box of Wheaties that wasn't infested with weevils, the one can of tuna that wasn't dented. Instead he began picking up things at random - cake mixes and Fritos and TV dinners, Shake 'n' Bake and Jello. When he plunked them down on the counter, Murdock eyed him suspiciously, rubbing a thumb along his unshaven cheek as cautiously as if he were testing a razor.

'Add it to my account,' Jake said.

Murdock stabbed his finger and the nickel-plated cash register clanged like a slot machine hitting triple oranges. 'That'll be thirty-two dollars and ninety cents. Cash.'

'What is this? I've been running up a tab all summer.'

'That was before I heard where you was stayin'.' He shot a glance at the phone. 'You're over at the lake, aren't you? The Casmaran cabin.'

Jake nodded cautiously. The way Murdock was looking at him, he felt as though he were confessing to a crime.

Murdock gripped both sides of the cash register, like a preacher at a pulpit. 'If you're stayin' in the Casmaran cabin, it's cash only, friend. I've had it up to here with you people.'

'Really? And what kind of people is that?'

The old man's gaunt face stretched into a smirk. 'New York. You're from New York, ain't you?'

So that's it,
Jake thought.
He hates Jews'

'How did you know?'

'Every summer it's the same thing. Those bleedin' hearts over at the camp rent their damn cabin to some so-called
artist . . .' (Read dirty Jew,
Jake thought.) 'Some guy comin' up here from New York, some artsy-fartsy asshole thinks he's bein' creative out there in the woods.'

Jake considered slugging him. But a glance out the window at the wall of trees beyond the porch reminded him that if he didn't buy his groceries at Murdock's Stop 'n' Shop, there'd be nowhere else for a hundred miles.

'And every summer it's the same shit,' Murdock muttered. 'The fella from that cabin runs up a tab as long as my arm buyin' food and booze, then takes a powder before the season's half over.'

'He splits for home?'

'Who knows? That's the last I see of him. All I know is he stiffs me with the bill.' Murdock picked up the three cans of tuna Jake had stacked on the counter and headed back to the shelf with them. 'No credit, friend. I'm through bein'
stung by Shylocks.'

The way Murdock limped across the warped floor, hun-ched, Scrooge-like, over the three dented cans, reminded Jake of Felix Cruller, the critic from the
Times
who had savaged his last piece. Jake scooped up the groceries from the counter and walked out the door without paying. When he finished
this
piece and laid it on him, he'd blow old Cruller away.

The pickup was slow to accelerate, but once Jake got it barreling along, he was pushing sixty. The truck's wheels crisscrossed over the white line as he forced it on with drunken excitement. The trip to the telephone had cost him valuable time, but had won him something more important isolation. The same isolation that had once driven him crazy was now essential for his work. He would be ready for the music when it came again tonight. Waiting. And if it didn't come, he would wait for it tomorrow night and the night after that. He would be there to seize it, record it - to extract inspiration from it. To make it his own.

The pickup swerved around a corner and Jake's eyes darted from the dusty asphalt to the side of the road. Where the hell was he? The wall of evergreens gave the impression that despite his speed, he was hardly moving at all. He hac lost his bearings, as if his giddy high had clouded his judgement on mundane matters, and searched frantically along the roadside for a landmark. He cursed himself for his stupidity and looked up at the sky, as if it might provide a clue to his location.

And when he looked up . . .

It shot across the sky so quickly that he wondered at first if he had seen anything at all. Maybe it was just a side-effect of his euphoria, he thought, like spots before the eyes.

But when he saw another one, he jammed on the brakes, skidding across the road onto the dirt shoulder with a screech of burning rubber.

From this distance, silhouetted against the gray of the gathering clouds, it was impossible to tell how large they were. They had no wings, but they were hurtling through the air, heading into a strong wind and seemingly unharried by it.

But if they weren't birds . . .

At first he blamed his ignorance of nature for not knowing what they were. There had to be a simple, rational explanation. But before he had a chance to sort it out, to analyze the sight, they vanished among the trees.

Magic? Since last night, when he'd heard the music, he already knew the place was magic. But the idea didn't frighten him. Right now, he needed that magic more than he had ever needed anything before.

He shoved the truck back into gear, the engine rumbling to life. As baffling as it had been, the mystery above the trees had also been strangely reassuring. A promise that the music - the music on which everything depended - would come again tonight.

Chapter 20

'. . . And it is a special privilege to welcome our fellow daughters of Casmaran here today . . .'

Sarah was addressing the audience from the dance pavilion stage, wearing a lemon-yellow Lacoste shirt and white bermudas instead of her usual leotard and Indian blouse, the whistle around her neck replaced by a string of pearls. The women sat in aluminum folding chairs facing her, their hands folded in their laps, the summer suits in silk and linen unwrinkled even in the muggy heat. Cassie noticed that they all wore sunglasses, though the sky had clouded over. Their eyes were hidden, yet she felt that they were staring at her.

Why had none of the girls' fathers come today? Cassie wondered, uneasy at the realization. The women wore the plastic nametags that had been awaiting them in the lodge, nametags that were for the most part unnecessary. Their faces would have been familiar to anyone who read a newspaper or magazine, Cassie thought, recognizing seve-ral of them from the political receptions and speeches that she'd attended with her father.

'I'd like to introduce our guests,' Sarah said, nodding to them one by one: '. . . Mrs Sybil Flint, Head of the World Hunger Fund . . .' Robin's mother. The statuesque blonde in the Italian leather jacket, one of those infuriatingly cool Nordic women, had never been close with her mother, Cassie thought, even though they had been summer neighbors on Nantucket. The woman was sitting next to her daughter, and Cassie wondered whether she had noticed the change in Robin. Or perhaps mother and daughter were simply more alike now.

'. . . Catherine Gorham, publisher of the Washington Herald

The prim woman in dull blue had dined at their town-house in Georgetown more than once, and Cassie remembered being trundled out in her quilted satin bathrobe to say good night, the woman responding with a grin that came a little too readily to be genuine. She had written the obituary for Cassie's mother herself and it had appeared edged in black on the front page of the newspaper. But it struck Cassie now that her mother had once confided that she couldn't stand her.

'. . . General Loren Bradshaw . . .' The mannish woman had worn civilian clothes here, of course, but the beige suit was as severe, as crisply starched as if it were a uniform. It was hard for Cassie to imagine that this lady with the ramrod-straight posture could ever have had a daughter. And yet she was holding hands with Tris, the blonde Amazon from the senior cabin. General Bradshaw was the only woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cassie thought, the only woman on the reviewing stand at Woods Hole besides herself and her mother the morning Ann . . .

The General had run like the others. She had run like hell.

'Of course, one of us is missing today,' Sarah said. 'One of the most respected campers ever to bunk up at Casmaran. Ann Cunningham Broyles.'

There was a respectful moment of silence, and Cassie
squirmed
under the pitying gaze of the audience. Bitches,
hypocritical
bitches. Every one of these mothers had been
seniors
once, she thought. Which ones had tormented her mother, the way Abigail and Robin had tormented her? Maybe as adults they had learned how to hide their sadistic selves under veils of politeness, but deep down they were still no different from their daughters at Casmaran. If they were the 'lifelong friends' her mother had meant in the letter, then why had none of them come to the funeral?

Cassie picked out Abigail in the audience. She had never imagined her as having a mother. And when Sarah rattled off the name of Abigail's mother, everything suddenly made even less sense than before.

'. . . Margot Burgess . . . Director of the FBI . . .'

The gray silk dress adorned with a single jade teardrop on a gold chain, the close-cropped gray coiffure, sensible while still feminine . . . Cassie refused to believe that someone entrusted with upholding the law and order could have a child so evil.

But then a thought sliced across Cassie's mind and she forgot all about Abigail:
What is Margot Burgess doing

here?

Her father had said that the FBI Director was leaving immediately for California, and that he was going along. Had he just been lying so he wouldn't have to come?

But there was another possibility, one that was even more disturbing. What if Margot Burgess had lied to him? What if she had sent him out to the West Coast on a wild goose chase, while she came here? Cassie didn't understand, and yet she read a threat in Margot Burgess' presence, a threat that was too intense to grasp head-on, like trying to stare directly into the sun.

The women were blending together into a faceless crowd before Cassie's eyes, like the generals and admirals at Woods Hole, obeying a reverent silence like the one before her mother had climbed the scaffolding.

'Today we're honored with a special guest,' Sarah said. The audience murmured enthusiastically. A guest who hasn't blessed us with her presence for many years . ..' Sarah nodded to Cassie. 'But first, some special entertain-ment.'

Cassie felt naked in her leotard. It was suddenly as if she were about to perform for the same audience she had performed for at Woods Hole when she had taken the bottle of champagne. The breeze off the lake stung like an ocean wind. As she started up the steps to the dance pavilion, the stairs creaked, like those leading to the scaffolding that had faced the submarine. Why did she feel so certain that once she stepped out onto this wind-whipped platform something equally unexpected would happen?

Someone put on
Swan Lake,
the overture rich with violins.

Everybody's watching.

As Cassie wavered on the edge of the stage, expectant applause rippled through the audience. Although intendec to encourage her, she knew, it had the opposite effect. It sounded too much like the applause of the crowd at Woods Hole, the moment the champagne had exploded against the steel hull.

She stared back at the women watching her from behinc sunglasses that reflected the glare of the sky with a metallic gaze.
She must be seriously disturbed,
she was sure they were thinking.
Not surprising, after all she's been through

To hell with them. They can't make me dance.

The last thing Cassie wanted to do was lose herself in the music. She should be thinking now, making sense of things that didn't make sense, trying to put the pieces of this unsettling puzzle together.

And then she saw someone watching her, someone in the woods on the opposite side of the dance pavilion from the audience, where the forest formed a green velvet backdrop Jake had pulled his pickup to a stop on the dirt road anc leaned out of the open window. He was smiling at her.

Jake. It was almost like having her father there to watch.

Dance. Show him how good you are. Show him how you can make the music come alive.

She was only dimly aware of how she reached the center
₀
f the stage, and yet when she moved across the smooth
_w
ood floor, the music
did
take hold, like the wind that was blowing ever more strongly off the lake.

She spun gracefully towards the water, then circled back in a series of
jetes,
stealing a glance at Jake in the woods. As she danced she could feel the tension easing from her body, and for a moment it was as if her mother were dancing with her, as if the events that had tainted Casmaran had never happened. The music had brought her under its spell, and she glanced back at the audience, certain it had captured them, too.

But they weren't paying attention; they weren't even looking up at the stage. They had twisted around in their seats, craning their necks to stare behind them. The record ended, but there was no applause, for the audience was standing in respectful silence as Abigail pushed a wheelchair towards them, with a passenger, small and frail.