Animal, the Vegetable, and John D Jones

by Betsy Byars

  “Well, get in,” the man said. As John D and Deanie crawled into the backseat over the fishing equipment, he added, “It’s been a bad year for drownings.”

  In a bucket at John D’s feet blue crabs scratched against the metal. The smell of old fish and seawater choked him. He swallowed.

  “A drowning,” he said carefully, “is what we are trying to prevent.”

  “There was a man drowned in June,” the man went on, throwing the car in gear, “and a lady back in May.”

  “Someone should keep an eye on these people,” said John D. He was watching the back of the man’s neck, but out of the corner of his eye he noticed a quick movement as Deanie glanced at him. Expression Number Two, he thought, irritation with others.

  “It don’t matter whether you keep an eye on them or not,” the man said. “The woman’s husband was sitting on the beach, and he couldn’t do a thing. They found the man’s body, but they never did find hers.”

  John D did not answer. He felt as if he had been drawn into a strong unknown current himself, swept out of a safe harbor into dangerous waters, and he was helpless to change his direction.

  He did not want to care about Clara, or about anybody else for that matter. He wanted only to act calmly, sanely, deliberately, the way he would act to save the life of any stranger. He felt he was acting that way, but underneath, where it counted, he was neither cool nor calm.

  “Where was your folks when this happened?” the man asked.

  “They went to get shrimp,” Deanie said.

  “What kind of car was they driving?”

  “Mercedes,” John D answered.

  John D looked out the window. The sun was getting lower in the sky now, low enough to shine in the car window. He shielded his eyes. Dark clouds were moving in from the north. The moss on the live oaks was blowing in the wind.

  As he sat there, eyes shaded, jaw tense, he felt a chill go through him. He actually shuddered, something he had never done before in his life.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Deanie snapped.

  “Nothing!”

  He hated the thought of night coming on, of bad weather approaching. He hated the helplessness of human beings, of Clara being battered about like an insignificant twig, of himself being battered around inside.

  He had always had a respect for the ocean. Other people might think of it as something for ships to sail on or something to swim at the edge of or something to dump wastes in. He saw it as a colossal, mysterious force that man would never understand.

  They were coming into town now. They passed the bait shop, the shell shop where conch-shell lamps glowed in the window, passed the café where you could eat all the fish you wanted for $2.95, past the trailer park. They drove slowly, searching the parking lots.

  “There they are! There they are!” John D cried as he saw an approaching cream Mercedes. “Stop!” He fumbled with the door handle. “Stop the car!”

  “I am!” The man stomped on the brake four times. “There, I’m stopped.”

  The door handle was twisting uselessly in John D’s hand.

  “That door don’t work. You’ll have to get out on her side.”

  John D tried to climb over Deanie, but she shoved him back with surprising strength. “She’s my sister,” she said.

  She got out of the car and ran down the middle of the road, waving frantically. “Daddy! Daddy!”

  “She’s going to get killed herself,” the man said. “Now, wouldn’t that be something? One drowned and one run over?”

  John D did not answer. He waited with one hand over his pounding heart. The car stopped.

  Deanie paused in the center of the road while her father and Delores got out of the car and ran toward her.

  “They’re all going to get hit,” the man predicted cheerfully.

  “Clara’s been swept out to sea!” Deanie cried. Then she burst into tears. As her father bent toward her, his face gone ashen in a moment, John D crawled out of the backseat.

  The traffic had stopped now. Drivers and passengers watched them with curiosity.

  “Thanks for the ride,” John D said. With his hand still firmly on his chest, holding his emotions in place, he walked through the cars to join them.

  CLARA HAD BEEN CLINGING to the float for two hours. She no longer yelled or cried or paddled toward the retreating island. She lay with her eyes squeezed shut, her body as stiff and unmoving as one of those bodies uncovered in Pompeii, petrified in a moment of fear.

  The waves were high and choppy now, and there was no rhythm to the movements of the float. It was like an amusement park ride designed to keep people off-balance. The float went up, turned sideways, tipped, was hit broadside by waves, slid between waves—up, down, sideways.

  Occasionally when the float made a particularly wrenching move, Clara would moan, but it was the sound of someone beyond hope. She had long since given up any thought of rescue. She felt as if she had been drawn far away from the normal world, into one of those spots that sailors fear, where the sea ignores the laws of nature and goes wild, a spot marked on old maps by drawings of dragons and reptiles.

  Clara had no idea how long she had been on the raft—all her life, it seemed. The part of her life spent on dry land—walking, sleeping, eating, doing normal things—seemed like a brief vague dream. This was hard cold reality.

  A wave slapped against the float, and Clara suddenly felt it tipping over. She screamed and clutched the raft tighter, but her scream was cut short. The raft flipped over and Clara was thrown into the sea.

  Her head went under water, and she came up choking. She slung her wet hair from her face and looked around. The float was drifting away.

  Clara swam after it. She reached out. The current pulled the float just beyond her grasp. She struggled through the waves, her eyes on the float, gasping for breath, swallowing saltwater.

  Her fingers touched the corner of the float and she fumbled to hold it. The float slipped away on the crest of a wave. She touched it again. It was gone. It was as if a playful hand were jerking the float out of her reach.

  Clara began to swim. Another wave rose and she sank into the trough between waves. The float was out of sight. Clara was gripped with a terrible fear.

  She waited, treading water anxiously, her eyes on the rolling waves. She caught sight of the float then, on the crest of a wave, and she struck out. Her arms and legs moved with a strength she had not known she had. Her teeth were clenched, her mouth clamped shut. A wave hit her face, and she plunged through it. She was gaining.

  She swam again, lifting her head. The float was within reach. She scissored her legs in one last spurt and felt her fingers close on the thin plastic. Tears ran down her cheeks as she pulled herself up.

  She lay across the float for a moment, her legs trailing in the choppy water. She coughed. She was exhausted. Her strength had gone as quickly as it had come. She could not lift her legs onto the float.

  As she lay there, arms and legs trembling with fatigue and cold, she noticed something printed on the float. She blinked her eyes to clear them, NOT TO BE USED AS A LIFE PRESERVER, she read. She rested her face against the letters. Now they tell me. She closed her stinging eyes.

  Then slowly, gasping with the effort, she threw one leg over the float. She rested. She pulled the other leg up and stretched out as gingerly as an old dog. She closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding in her ears.

  She lay there, clutching the sides of the float with both hands, legs shaking, knees knocking, waiting tensely for the next wave that could throw her again into the sea.

  This time, she said through her clenched teeth, this time I won’t let go.

  She glanced over her shoulder. The waves were tinted red by the sinking sun. She glanced skyward. The clouds were moving in, gray and foreboding. A lone gull, white as snow, dipped in the darkening sky.

  I will not let go, she said again.

  JOHN D AND HIS mother sat on the plastic sofa in the office of the Coast G
uard. The cushions were stiff and uneven, and they sat on the edge of their seats like unwanted guests. A cup of cold coffee was in his mother’s hand, forgotten.

  At the desk, waiting by the radio, were Deanie and her father. He was leaning forward, hand over his eyes as if shielding them from too much light. His shoulders were hunched up stiffly under his thin shirt. Deanie was twisting her hair.

  “What did that man say?” Deanie asked as a garbled message came from the radio. Both she and her father leaned forward.

  “It wasn’t about your daughter, sir,” the man answered in a kind voice.

  “Why can’t they find her?”

  “Every ship we have is on the alert, every fishing boat’s been contacted, two helicopters are searching the area.

  “I know, but she can’t have gotten that far. It’s only been three hours.”

  “They know where to look, sir. They know the tides.” He paused. “I’ll let you know as soon as we hear something.” He waited as if he expected them to move away, but they remained hunched miserably over the desk.

  Across the room Delores sighed. “I absolutely cannot bear to think of Clara out there on a flimsy raft. She must be terrified.”

  “I should think,” John D answered tersely.

  “You know”—her voice lowered—“I have always had a real dread of the ocean. I admit it. I have the feeling when I’m swimming that there are, I don’t know, creatures under there.”

  “There are, Mother.”

  “And the thought of being out there on a raft!” Her voice lowered again. “John D, that kind of raft costs five dollars. It is made of the cheapest, flimsiest plastic there is!”

  “I know!” John D always spoke with special anger when his mother said exactly what he himself was thinking.

  “I should never have let her go out.”

  “Mom, it was not your fault.” He got up abruptly and walked to the desk. He stood behind Deanie, waiting to be noticed. “Any news?” he asked finally.

  Deanie glanced around. In her anxiety she had twisted her hair into long uneven curls, and her face looked like something out of an old album. “No,” she said. John D waited a moment more, then turned and walked to the window. He looked out.

  Beyond the bay and the tidal marsh and the live oaks and the palmettos, the sun was beginning to sink in the sky. John D watched as it moved closer to the treetops and turned the water red.

  The boats rose and fell in the marina. White yachts, sailboats, double-deck cruisers, old fishing boats, all wallowed on the waves. The water was getting rougher, John D noticed.

  He crossed the room, got a drink of water he didn’t want, and sat by his mother. He flopped down so hard that his mother bounced.

  “No news?” she asked.

  “No.”

  His mother took a sip of her cold coffee. “It has always bothered me terribly to think of somebody who is trapped. I can hardly read stories about people who are stuck in mines or submarines. And now Clara—I can’t bear it.”

  She broke off as another message came over the radio. The operator looked up and shook his head. It was not about Clara. “There was a dreadful story last summer,” she went on. “A man, in the Pacific, I believe, fell overboard, and ship after ship went right past him. A liner almost bumped into him.”

  “That won’t happen with Clara,” he said. He sometimes felt that in hard times he and his mother switched places. He became the calming adult, saying, “That won’t happen” and “Everything will be all right,” while she thought up new worries.

  “I should never have let her go out on that raft.”

  “Mom.”

  “I shouldn’t have. I did a whole column on it once—on not letting your child’s life depend on a two-dollar piece of inflated plastic. I had had this heartbreaking letter from a woman whose child—they were in a lake—and she turned her back just for a moment and—”

  “Mom.”

  “You know why I didn’t?” She paused. “Because I wanted the girls to like me, and I was afraid if I kept saying over and over, ‘Be careful, Don’t do this, Stop that,’ well—only look! They don’t like me at all.”

  “They like you.”

  “They don’t. So I might as well have played the part of the Wicked Stepmother. At least Clara would be safe.”

  The radio was transmitting again, and the operator leaned close. Deanie and her father strained to hear. John D got up quickly and crossed the room.

  “Go ahead. … Yes …”

  Clara’s father drew his shoulders up under his thin shirt as if he were preparing to take a blow. Deanie reached for his arm.

  “I see. … How far out? … What color was it? … Any sign of the girl? … I see.”

  There was a long pause, then the man said, “Discontinue search.”

  “What?” Deanie asked in the sudden stillness. “Discontinue?”

  The man remained at the silent radio, bent forward, eyes on the dials. Then he looked up at Clara’s father. He took off his cap. He made a gesture with his head, a sideways nod, as if he were trying to rid himself of a troubling thought.

  “The helicopter spotted the raft,” he said. “Your daughter wasn’t on it.”

  DEANIE WAS IN THE bathroom of the Coast Guard station, standing in the middle of the tiled floor. She was alone. Delores had tried to come in with her, but Deanie had fought with Delores, struggled, and hit her, crying “Let me alone!” so violently that Delores had at last stepped back, arms raised in a gesture of defeat, and let her go into the bathroom alone.

  Now that she had won the battle and was alone, Deanie felt even more miserable. She looked around at the drab walls, the toilets, the basins. She had never understood why anyone would ever actually choose to be alone. She squeezed her eyes shut, turned her face to the ceiling, opened her eyes, and looked in misery at the lone light fixture.

  She heard the door open behind her. “It’s me,” Delores said from the doorway. “May I come in?”

  “No,” Deanie said.

  She heard Delores’s footsteps on the tile floor, coming toward her. She was relieved, but she let out her breath in a long sigh of pain and frustration.

  “Where is my father?” she asked.

  “He’s trying to get your mom on the phone.”

  Suddenly Deanie sagged. Her shoulders slumped. If there had been anything to hold on to for support, she would have grabbed it. “I feel awful,” she said.

  “I know you do, but you have to realize—”

  Deanie turned and faced Delores. “Did you ever have a sister?”

  “A half sister, but she was ten years older than I, and we weren’t close.”

  “Then you wouldn’t understand,” Deanie said flatly. She turned away, walked to one of the basins, and leaned.

  She could see her face in the warped mirror over the basin. Her face was as hard as a mask, her hair twisted like snakes.

  “I probably wouldn’t have understood it yesterday myself,” she admitted.

  She turned around. Still leaning on the basin, she said, “I mean, you just don’t believe your sister is going to get pulled out to sea. I mean, sure, bad things happen. Sure, people drown. But not your own sister!”

  “I know.”

  “I mean, if you believed something like that would happen, well, you would never be mean or leave her out or—” She broke off. “I mean, I never ever thought anything would happen to Clara!”

  She clamped her lips shut. Suddenly she wished she could cry. She felt the tears building inside her. She put her fists to her eyes and pressed.

  Delores said, “My husband—John D’s father—was killed in a plane crash the day he was born. He was flying to the hospital to be with me, and the plane crashed in Pittsburgh. He died a half hour before John D was born.”

  Deanie dropped her hands and looked at Delores. Delores had spoken so softly that Deanie moved closer. “That really happened?”

  “I was just like you. I couldn’t believe it. Things li
ke that didn’t happen.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, when I did believe it, I went to pieces. I wouldn’t even hold John D for weeks. The nurses kept bringing him in and bringing him in and—to me it was as if, well, if John D hadn’t been born early, then John would never have been on that plane and would never have crashed. He would still be alive.” She shook her head. “It sounds awful, I know, inhuman, but at the time …”

  “Does John D know about that?”

  “He knows his father died on the day he was born, and he knows I went sort of crazy.” She sighed. “John D’s a very bright boy. He doesn’t miss much.”

  “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting.”

  “It’s all right.” She put her hands on Deanie’s shoulders. “I do know how you feel.” When Deanie did not pull away, she slid her arms around her.

  “I said something that was so true the other day,” Deanie said.

  “What was that?”

  “I said that what’s really wrong with the world is that things happen to the wrong people. I mean”—her voice began to quiver—“I mean, like the wrong people get sick and die and swept out to sea.”

  “I’ve felt like that.”

  “Clara’s really a better person than I am, if you want to know the truth.”

  And Deanie put her head on Delores’s shoulder and began to cry.

  I WILL NOT LET go. … I will not let go …

  Clara was so intent on staying on the raft that she had not heard the sound of the approaching boat. She had not heard the men’s voices.

  “Hey, girl, are you all right?”

  “She’s not moving.”

  “She’s got to be alive. Look how tightly she’s holding on.”

  I will not let go …

  Clara had not seen the boat pull up behind her, did not feel the raft bump against the boat. And when human hands grabbed her stiff arm, she screamed like a wild person. “Nooooo!” She flung her head back, still screaming, and was lifted out of the water like something baited and caught from the sea.