Ride the Nightmare

Chris grabbed his shaking daughter and raised her to his shoulders.

“Grab her!” he said. “I can’t reach her!”

”Connie, stand up!” he ordered.

“I can’t!”

“Yes!”

Her clutching hands left his head, he felt her trying to stand on his shoulders.

“Daddy, I’m falling!”

“You’re not! I’ve got you. Reach up and take Mommy’s hands!” A wave of dizziness passed over him. The heat seemed about to swallow him. He heard Connie’s labored gasping above, heard Helen telling her to reach up a little further.

“Hurry, baby!” he shouted hoarsely.

Abruptly, Connie was off his shoulders, being drawn up. Chris fell, gasping, against the wall. Suddenly, he threw his arm up as a wind-driven burst of flame flashed toward him. He felt the searing heat on his flesh. Then the wind had sucked it back. Turning, he looked up. He could just make out their forms clinging to the side of the wall, their feet on the bush.

“Can’t you reach the ledge?” he called.

“I can’t, Chris! Not holding her!”

Gritting his teeth, Chris leaped up and caught onto the bush. For a moment it seemed as if he hadn’t the strength to pull himself up. Teeth clenched, he strained upward inch by inch. He couldn’t break now, not when they were so close to safety.

Another few seconds and he was on the bush beside them. He pulled himself up onto the narrow ledge, drew Connie up, then Helen. Then, too easily it seemed after all these horrible hours, all of them were on the rim of the draw and he was holding Connie, they were running from the fire and, though it seemed impossible to believe, he knew they were safe and that the nightmare was ended.

Chapter Seventeen

Chris stood by the living room window, staring out at the surf. In the back bedroom, Connie had just fallen asleep in Helen’s arms. In the kitchen, Helen’s mother was preparing some lunch. It was almost two-thirty.

None of them had spoken since the first few moments of hysterical relief that followed their escape. They had gotten into the car and Chris had driven them out of the canyon, stopping at a telephone booth to report the fire. Helen’s mother had suggested that they go to her house for a while and, without comment, Chris had driven them there.

He glanced down at his left arm. There was a slow crawling of pain on it. He drew up his sleeve and saw that the skin was red. He let the sleeve fall. He’d take care of it later.

“Are you hungry?”

Chris looked around and saw Helen’s mother standing in the kitchen doorway, looking at him. There was no expression on her face.

He shook his head a little. “No, thank you,” he said. For a second, he tried to remember when it was he’d last eaten. Then, turning back to the window, he forgot about it. It didn’t matter.

A few minutes later, Helen came out of the bedroom. Chris turned at the sound of her footsteps.

“How is she?” he asked.

“All right.”

He swallowed dryly.

“Is she—burned?” he asked.

“A little on her hands,” she answered. “I put some salve on them.”

He nodded and watched her move into the kitchen. He saw her mother embrace her and he turned back to the window.

In a minute, Helen came back in with two steaming cups. “Coffee?” she asked.

“Thank you.” He took one of the cups and sat down on the sofa. It wasn’t until his weight had settled on the cushion that he realized how tired he was.

Helen sat across from him on an armchair. She didn’t meet his eyes.

”Does your head hurt?” she asked.

“No.” It did hurt but he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Helen?”

She looked up.

“Are you—?” He swallowed. “Do you want to know what I’m— going to do?”

Her lips flexed together tensely and Chris felt a flare of pain in his head. She doesn’t care, he thought “Yes,” she said, quietly.

“I’m going to the police.”

“I see.”

Is that all? asked his mind Then he realized that it seemed a small thing now after what had happened.

He put down the cup and stared at his hands for several moments. Then, with a sigh, he got up.

“I’ll go now,” he said.

They looked at each other in silence. Her lips moved as if she couldn’t find the proper words to speak.

“It—can’t be the same,” she said.

“I know.” He kept looking at her. hoping that something could be said or done to end this pain. “I—know,” he repeated, turning away.

“Do you—?”

He turned back. “What?”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“If you want to.”

She nodded slowly. “You’re still my husband,” she said. It sounded more like a reluctant admission than a statement, though.

You don I have to, bristled his mind. Then he knew that he had no privileges of resentment any more.

“Let’s go then,” he said.

“I’ll tell Mom.”

Chris stood by the front door while Helen spoke to her mother in the kitchen. He couldn’t hear what they said. In several minutes. Helen came out and they left the house. They got into the car and Chris started driving toward Santa Monica.

“What do you—?” she started after they’d been driving for a while in silence. “What do you think will happen?”

“I don’t know.” he said.

“Oh…”

Helen glanced over at him. He had never looked so grave. She felt an urge to touch his hand, to comfort him She repressed it. Things could not be the same. Thoughtless emotion had no point now.

Still, she thought, Connie was safe. She would not be if it hadn’t been for Chris. Nor would she have ever been exposed to such horrible danger if it hadn’t been for Chris, her mind reacted.

Nor would she have ever been born if it hadn’t been for Chris, it reacted once again.

Things whirled in a circle. Every moment was the result of those before it, the foundation of those that followed. You could not divorce one from the other and find separate meaning in the parts. It existed as one flow— good and bad together—which you accepted or did not. Chris was in her life. She had accepted the good of that for many years. Now she was being asked to accept the bad of it. Right or wrong, could she turn her back on him?