Casey's axe handle lay at his feet. He stooped slowly to pick it up.
His gaze never left me.
I had expected to see imbecility in his eyes. It wasn't there. I felt
him measuring me. His mouth was set in a thin taut line. Rafferty
was wrong. All of us were wrong. It was no idiot standing there. He
was far more dangerous than that.
On the axe handle his grip had turned the knuckles white.
I filled each hand with a stone. Puny things to use against him. My
strength had not returned to me. I waited.
He looked at Casey.
Then at the dog.
Then at Mary. He looked at her for a long time.
And then his eyes returned to me.
As I say, my mind was not quite working right just then.
And I'm not sure it is at all possible to see your own face reflected
in the face of another. I've already told you that there was a feeling
of being drugged by then. But that's what I seemed to see there. My
own face. Me in him. The same loss. The same fear and frustration
and anger. And finally, the same mute empty resignation.
My stomach rolled, my head tumbled. I closed my eyes for a moment.
When I opened them, he was gone.
They found us on the pebble beach.
They thought we both were dead, because I wasn't responding to much by
then. We were lying together, and I guess I'd arranged her arms around
me somehow. A lot of that's missing, and I don't necessarily want it
back.
I wonder how I got her down there.
I never could have carried her, not with my leg the way it was. So I
suppose I dragged her down, just to get us out of there. But I don't
remember that either.
I have no idea how long we waited.
There were two parties, one that came through the tunnel like we had,
another searching along the beach. I'm told they arrived at nearly the
same time, the second group a bit behind the first. Kim was with the
second party. They wouldn't let her go in through the wall.
She says that the first she saw of me was one of the policemen wrapping
me in a blanket. There was a second blanket covering Casey. I was
glad she hadn't seen her. Gladder still that she hadn't seen Steven.
She'd pointed out the entrance to them, and that was all. They said it
was possibly dangerous.
Days later, we almost laughed at that.
+ +
I was sedated, hospitalized, treated for the leg wound and assorted
cuts and bruises.
My parents came to visit, and they each had the good grace not to
mention how stupid it all had been. My mother thanked god a lot. She
seemed nervous all the time and astonished that I'd lived. My father
always seemed to carry a kind of hearty seriousness about him around
me, as though we were both somehow transported back to World War II and
I was his bunkmate, who'd had the bad fortune to get himself shot but
who would doubtlessly recover. Strangely, I appreciated that.
Rafferty came by.
It was awkward. About all he could do was tell me how sorry he was and
shake his head in wonderment. I think he felt a little responsible. As
though it all went back to that day we went through the garbage cans
together. I tried to reassure him. Thought maybe, in a way, it did.
I learned from Rafferty that all they'd ever found of Ben Crouch was a
set of footprints leading down the beach which stopped in the dark wet
sand at the tide line. Drowned? Everyone seemed to think so. I hoped
not. I sincerely hoped not.
And still do.
Kim was there constantly. 'When you're up to it,' she said, 'I want to
know how it was. Not now, but sometime.'
She never mentioned it after that. She'd just sit long hours holding
my hand and watching me stare off into space, into blue eyes and
sunlight, and she didn't disturb me and didn't need to talk. I
appreciated that most of all.
Once I was out I saw a lot of Kim. My mother once hinted that she
thought it might turn into something. It did, but not the way she was
thinking. It became a friendship, and a strong one- one I maintain to
this day with letters and phone calls. She's five hundred miles away
now. Her husband understands.
One afternoon toward the end of August, I made good on a promise to
tell her what went on in there. It was rough on both of us but worth
it. We sat in Harmon's for a long time afterward, sipping cokes,
saying nothing.
By then I knew I was leaving town, going to Boston. I had a job there
that my dad had arranged for me, and I was hoping a small Beacon Hill
school was going to accept me for the fall term. As it turned out I
did get in. Just barely. She was returning to Chestnut Hill. There
was no staying in Dead River after what happened. Not for either of
us.
Kim never saw the town again.
I went home now and then to visit my folks. But it was never good for
me. It was strictly duty.
Anyway, we sat there a long time while hamburgers slid in and out of
the microwave and sodas were poured and people came and went, and I got
to thinking about Casey and that last time we'd had together when she'd
said she loved me, and how changed she was by then. I knew it was
finally clear to her as it was to me that the end of all the useless
risk was not thrills but waste and death, a death from within- and that
