What could have happened, he wondered, to the two of them?
He straightened carefully and laid the aching arm across his lap.
Funny how fuzzy he seemed to be. Just a little pain… The pain hit him again and he doubled up. Slowly he let out his sucked-in breath as the pain, after its vicious stab, ebbed from his body to leave him limp and shaken.
I must not die, he told himself. Somehow I must keep from dying.
He clawed his way erect and stood hunched beside the bench. Down the street he saw the dome light of a cab. He ran, half stumbling, down the walk toward the street, waving his right hand at the oncoming cab.
The cab pulled in and the driver reached back to open the door. Chapman stumbled in, slumped into the seat.
His breath was coming hard, whistling in his throat.
"Where to, mister?"
"Take me…" said Chapman, and stopped. For a sudden thought had struck him. Not to a hospital. Not immediately. There was another place that he must so first.
The cabbie was half turned in his seat, staring at him.
"Mister, are you all right?"
"I'm all right."
"You look a bit shook up."
"I'm O.K.," said Chapman. It was so hard to think. So hard to keep his thoughts straight. His mind was slow and muddy.
"I want to go," he said, "to a post office."
"There's one just down the street, but the windows will be closed."
"No," Chapman whispered. "Not just any post office. One particular one." He told the cabbie where it was.
The driver glanced at him suspiciously.
"Mister, you don't look so good to me."
"I'm all right," said Chapman.
He leaned back in the seat and watched the street slide past as the cab got underway. Most of the stores and shops were dark. A few lights still burned in the great hulks of the apartment houses. And just ahead was a church, with the burnished cross gleaming in the moonlight. Once, he remembered, he had gone to a church—for all the good it did him.
The night was quiet, and the city quiet, as it always was at night. He sat and watched it flow smoothly past him and there was in it, he found, a sort of peace. Earth and life, he thought, and both of them were good. The splashes of light that the lamps threw on the pavement, the padding cat, a part of the night itself, the painted signs advertising bargains, lettered on the windows of the shops—all these were things he'd seen before, but never really seen. And now, leaning back in the moving cab, he saw them for the first time, saw them as separate units which made up the city that he knew. Almost, he thought, as if he were saying good-by to all of it and was seeing it in an effort to remember it in the days when he'd be gone.
Although he was not going anywhere. First to the post office, then to a hospital, and when he reached the hospital he'd call home, for if he failed to call, Alice would vrorry, and she had enough to worry about without him adding to it. But no money worries. He felt good about that, thinking of the book and how she had no money worries.
The arm bothered him. He wished it would quit its aching. He felt all right now, except for the arm. A little weak and shaken, perhaps, but it was the arm that worried him.
The cab pulled up to the curb and the driver turned to open the door.
"Here we are," he said. "You want that I should wait?"
"If you please," said Chapman. "I'll be right out."
He climbed the steps haltingly, for it seemed to take a lot of effort. His legs seemed to drag and he was panting when he reached the top.
He crossed the lobby and found the box he'd rented weeks ago. The envelope, he saw, still was there—just one envelope.
B to F and back to A. He turned the knob slowly and carefully and it did not work. He spun the dial and did it once again and this time it opened. Reaching in, he took out the envelope and closed the box.
As he turned with the letter clutched in his hand, the pain struck at him once again—massive, brutal, terrible. Thundering blackness closed in upon him and he fell, not feeling the impact when his body hit the floor.
Moving in the hushed and glowing light of a brand-new dawn, the mind and consciousness of Franklin Chapman entered into the place called Death.
32
The storm burst minutes after he had started out and, carrying the man cradled in his arms, Frost struggled through a land filled with the blinding slash of lightning, bursting with the clap and roll of thunder that reverberated back and forth among the hills, while rain sluiced down in torrents and the very ground beneath his feet seemed to crawl with the sliding movement of the runoff water gushing down the slope. Above him the trees thrashed like giant creatures in the agonies of death and high in the great cliffs that crowned the hills the wind moaned and howled in the silences between the crashing of the thunder.
The man he carried was no lightweight—a big and husky man—and there were many times that Frost had to stop to rest, lowering the man so that his weight rested on the ground while he still kept him cradled in his arms. In between the rests he fought his way, step by careful step, in the frightful steepness of the bluffside, the underfooting made soft and treacherous by the downpour. Below him he heard the vicious growling of the flood waters, funneled into the hollow off the hillsides and boiling down the steep, notched valley. By now, more than likely, the camp where he'd found the man he carried was under a foot or more of racing water.
A deep dusk had fallen with the coming of the storm and he could see only a few yards ahead of him. He had not dared to allow himself to think of the distance yet ahead. He thought no farther than the next step and then, when that had been taken, yet another step. Time ceased to have a meaning and the world became a few feet square and he moved forward in a fog of gray eternity.
Now, without any sign of coming to an end, the woods came to an end. One moment they were there, then he stepped out of them and before him stretched what once had been a hayfield, with the knee-high grasses slanting all one way before the fury of the wind, the white shine of their stems ghostly in the twilight, the spume of driven wind a solid mist above them.
Upon the hill above the field sat a house, a rock against the storm, surrounded by wind-lashed trees, and just above the near horizon a hump of darkness that must be the barn.
He trudged heavily out into the field and here the ground was not as steep and the nearness of the house put a spring into his step that he would have sworn was impossible.
He crossed the field and now, for the first time since he had started on the climb, he became aware of the warmth in the body that he carried. Climbing the hill it had been a burden only, a weight he had to support, that he had to carry. But now, once again, the weight became a man.
He went underneath the trees that stood around the house, while the lightning snarled through the skies and the surging wind beat at him with its freight of rain.
As he rounded the porch, the house took on its old familiar look. Even in the rain he could imagine the two rocking chairs close together on the porch and the two old people sitting in them of a summer evening, looking out across the river valley.
He reached the steps and they were rickety when he stepped on them, but they held his weight and he mounted to the porch.
And now the door, he thought. It had not occurred to him before, but now he wondered if it might be locked. But locked or not, he would get in—break in the door or break out a window. For the man he carried must be gotten under shelter.
He moved across the boards of the porch toward the door and as he neared it, the door came open and a voice said, "Put him over here."
The dark human figure moved ahead of him and he saw, against one wall, what appeared to be a cot.
Stooping, he laid the man on the cot and then stood erect. His arms were stiff and sore and it seemed that he could feel each muscle in them and for a moment the room swayed slightly, then was still.
The other person, the one who had opened the door, was at a table on the o
ther side of the room. A tiny tongue of light flickered, then grew bright and steady, and Frost saw that it was a candle. And the last time he had seen a candle had been that night (how long ago?) when Ann Harrison had sat across the table from him.
The other person turned and she was a woman-a plain, but forceful face, sixty maybe, perhaps more than that, an old face and yet in many ways an ageless face, calm and confident. She wore her hair skinned back into a bun that rode low on her neck and she wore a ragged sweater that had an elbow hole.
"What is wrong with him?" she asked.
"Snakebit. I found him, alone, in a camp down on the river road."
She picked up the candle and'came across the room to hand it to him.
"You hold this," she said, "so I have some light to work by."
She bent above the man on the cot.
"It's his leg," said Frost.
"I can see," she said.
She reached out her hands and laid hold of the tattered bottoms of the trouser leg. Her hands jerked apart and the fabric ripped with a screeching sound. She took hold of the edges of the torn cloth and jerked them again and the cloth fell away, leaving the leg exposed.
"Hold the light lower," she told him.
"Yes, ma'am," said Frost.
The flesh of the leg was splotched, black with angry red spots here and there. The skin, stretched tight by the swelling, glistened in the candlelight. A few open sores seeped pus. "How long has he been like this?" "I don't know. I found him this afternoon." "You packed him up the hill? In this storm?" "There was no way out of it," he said. "I had to." "There's not much I can do," she said. "We can get him cleaned up. Some hot soup into him. Keep him comfortable."
"There's no medical aid available, of course." "There's a rescue and monitor station about ten miles from here," she said, "and I have a car. We can take him there when the storm stops. But the road is too bad to try it while it still is storming. There's too much danger of washouts and there are apt to be some bad mud-holes. If we can get him there, they'll fly him into Chicago with a helicopter."
She turned about and started for the kitchen. "I'll poke up the fire," she said, "and heat some water. You can try to get him cleaned up a bit while I cook some soup. We'll try to get some down him."
"He talked to me a bit," said Frost. "Not much. Something crazy about a lot of jade. It was like carrying a dead man. I think he was out cold most of the time I carried him. But I knew he was still alive because of the body heat."
"It would be a bad time," she said, "for a man to die. And a bad place. Even more so down there in the valley. In a storm like this, the rescue unit would never get to him in time." "I thought of that," said Frost.
"You came straight here. You knew there was a house?" "Many years ago," he said, "I knew about the house. I did not expect to find it occupied."
"I've been using it," she said. "I didn't think anyone would mind."
"I'm sure no one will," he said.
"You look as if you could use some food yourself," she told him, "and some rest."
"There is something, ma'am," he said, "that I have to tell you. I'm an osty. I've been ostracized and I'm not supposed to talk with anyone and no one is supposed…"
She lifted a hand. "I know what ostracism is. There's no need to explain."
"What I mean to say is, it's only fair to tell you. You can't tell in bad light. I let my beard grow and it hides the worst of the marks. I'll stick around and help you with the man if you want me to and then I'll get out I don't want to get you into any sort of trouble."
"Young man," she said, "ostracism doesn't mean a thing to me.-I doubt it does to anyone out here in the wilderness." "But I don't want…"
"And if you're ostracized and not supposed to have anything to do with anyone, why did you bother with this man?"
"I couldn't leave him there. I couldn't let him die." "You could," she said. "Ostracized, he was no concern of yours." "But ma'am…"
"I've seen you somewhere before," she said. "Without the beard. I thought so the first time I saw your face in the candlelight, but…"
"I don't think you did," he said. "My name is Daniel Frost and…"
"Daniel Frost, of Forever Center?" "That is right. But how…"
"The radio," she told him. "I have a radio and I listen to the news. They said you'd disappeared. They said there'd been some sort of scandal. They never said you'd been ostracized. Later there was an item about some murder and… but I know now where I saw you. It was at the New Year's party just a year ago." "The New Year's party?" "The one at Forever Center in New York. You may not remember me. We were not introduced. I was with the Timesearch project."
"Timesearch!" he almost shouted. For he knew now who this woman was. The one who B.J. said must be found, the one who'd disappeared.
"I'm glad to finally meet you, Daniel Frost," she said. "My name is Mona Campbell."
33
Ann Harrison knew now that once again she had wandered into a dead-end road, but there was little she could do about it except to go on until she found a place she could turn the car around. Then she would retrace her way and try for another road that would lead her west.
Once, long ago, the roads had been numbered and well marked and there had been maps available at any service station. But now the road markers had mostly disappeared and there were no service stations. With cars powered by longlife storage batteries, there was no longer any need of service stations.
Out here in the wilderness it was a matter of making out the best one could, ferreting out the roads that would take one where he wished to go, making many wrong turnings, backtracking to find another way-some days making only a few miles on one's route and seldom being sure of where one really was. Occasionally there were people who could be asked, occasionally there were towns that could be identified. But other than this, it was a matter of good guessing.
The day was warm and the heavy growth that grew close against the road to make a tunnel of it trapped and held the heat. Even with the windows open, it was hard to breathe.
The road had grown narrower in the last mile or so and now was little more than a dugout sliced into the hillside. To the right the hill rose steeply, dense and thick with trees and underbrush, with gray boulders, splotched with moss, poking from the leaf-covered earth beneath the trees. To the left the ground sloped sharply away, studded with boulders and with trees.
Ann made a bargain with herself. If, within another five minutes of driving she did not find a place to turn around, she would back the car to the fork she had taken several miles back. But it would be slow work and perhaps even hazardous because of the narrowness of the track, and she didn't want to do it unless it was necessary.
Ahead of the car tree branches arched and met to make the road a tunnel and some of the branches, drooping low, or leaning out from the side of the road, brushed against the car.
She saw the nest too late, and even seeing it, did not recognize it for what it was. It was a gray ball that looked like a wad of dirty paper hanging from one of the branches that scraped, at windshield height, against the side of the car.
It scraped around the windshield post and bounced suddenly into the open window and as it swung it erupted in a blur of buzzing insects.
And in that instant Ann recognized the wadded ball of paper-a wasp nest.
The insects exploded in her face and swarmed into her hair. She screamed and threw up her hands to fight them off. The car lurched and seemed to stagger, then plunged off the road. It smashed into one tree, bounced off, slammed into a boulder and caromed around it, finally came to rest, still upright, its rear end wedged between two trees.
Ann found a door handle and pushed down on it. The door came open and she threw herself out, rolling off the edge of the seat and hitting the ground. She scrambled to her feet and ran, wildly, blindly. She slapped at her face and neck. She tripped and fell and rolled, was brought up by a fallen tree trunk.
One wasp was crawling on her foreh
ead, another buzzed angrily in her hair. There were two painful, burning areas on the back of her neck and another on her cheek.
The wasp on her forehead flew away. Slowly she sat up and shook her head. The buzzing ceased. That wasp, too, apparently was gone.
She pulled herself to her feet, became aware of many bruises and abrasions and a few more stings. There was a muted throbbing in one ankle. She sat down carefully on the fallen tree trunk and beneath her weight rotted wood crumbled and fell away, dropping to the forest floor.
Around her the wilderness was black and gray and green—and the silence green as well. Nothing stirred. It waited. It crouched and was sure of itself. It did not care.
She felt the mental scream rise in her brain and fought it down. This was no time, she told herself, to give way to nerves. The thing to do was to stay for a moment on this log and get her thoughts together, to make assessment of the situation and then go up the hill and see what shape the car was in. Although she was sure that the car, even if it were in operating order, would not, under its own power, pull itself back onto the road. Cars were built for city streets, not for terrain such as this.
It had been foolish to start out, of course. This was a trip she never should have tried. She had started, she remembered, driven by two motives—the need to escape the surveillance by Forever Center and in the faint belief that she knew where Daniel Frost might be. And why Daniel Frost? she asked herself. A man she had seen but once, a man she had cooked a dinner for and eaten with at a table set with candles and red roses. A man she had found easy to talk with. A man who had promised help even when he knew that he had no help to give, even when he faced some terrible danger of his own. And a man who had said he spent his boyhood summers at a farm near Bridgeport in Wisconsin.
And a man who later had been made a pariah.
Lost dogs, she thought, and homeless cats—although there were no longer many dogs or cats. And lost causes. She was a sucker for lost causes, an inevitable and unremitting champion of misfortune. And what had it gotten her?
Why Call Them Back from Heaven Page 15
