Malden handed the wallet back. “They tell who John Flagan is. You’re not going anywhere.”
“You can’t take it. That’s theft!”
“I’ll keep it until we can get this straightened out. Listen, Flagan. We’re on an island. It’s getting smaller by the minute. This house is on the highest point of land. You can’t tell anymore where the old river channels were. Unless you can swim like an otter and duck trees and branches, you’re staying right here.”
Flagan’s voice became more shrill. “But I got to get out of here. I’m John Flagan.”
“A respectable banker. You try to steal cars and knock women down, and you carry all the bank’s funds in your pocket.”
“But just ask Charl...”
Flagan stopped abruptly and closed his eyes and seemed to dwindle. His mouth worked. He pushed himself away from the wall and walked to the doorway that opened into the next room. His face was set in an odd expression, the corners of his mouth pulled down. Hal Dorn suddenly realized he had seen the same expression on Stevie’s face when Stevie was trying with all his might not to cry.
The children had quieted down. Jean said to him, “Come on, darling. Come and sit down.”
“I’m all right,” he said irritably. But he let her lead him over to the comer. He sat on the blankets near the children. Jean sat beside him. The children stared at him.
“I bet, after you got up, you could have hit him maybe a hundred million times,” Stevie said. “I bet you were going to beat him to a pulp.”
Hal looked at the tear tracks on his son’s face and saw the tremor of the underlip. “To a bloody pulp,” he agreed wearily.
“Hush, honey,” Jean said to Stevie.
“I bet he was going to,” Stevie said loyally.
“That man hit your Daddy when your Daddy didn’t expect it, that’s all. He’s a bad man.”
Hal moved his head gingerly. His neck was beginning to stiffen. The time of command was over. It had been short. Now Malden was in charge. Hal was willing to accept that. His own brief moments of decision had been like the last touch of flame in a dying fire. Even Stevie had sensed the defeat, the resignation. And was trying to fight against it with loyalty and love. When the loss of faith came to a man, sharp and unexpected and bitter, it permeated to every part of him. And Hal sat gray and sour with self-loathing, knowing that he had deliberately taken longer than necessary to get back onto his feet. It had been self-doubt that had kept him down and a fear of the pain those heavy fists could inflict. Yet pride had insisted that he make the struggle to stand up.
Stevie said, “I bet you could have just hit that old...”
“Shut up!” Hal yelled at him. He saw the tears come and stand on the long lashes, and he looked away.
Malden and Virginia Sherrel came over. The Hollis couple moved closer. Malden squatted on his heels and said, “Get anything on the radio?”
Hal nodded. “It’s bad. Local stations are using emergency power. Long lists of places that should be evacuated. The hurricane is pushing flood tides ahead of it. It is going to hit this part of the coast about four o’clock they think.”
“Hollis and I didn’t get very far,” Malden said. “It’s rough out there. Water is spread all over the flats. No telling how far it is to the highway. Wind knocked us down I don’t know how many times. Big branches sailing by. Hollis nearly got one on the head.” He paused as though waiting for Hal to make a suggestion, then said, “I guess we ought to cart the stuff upstairs. And get any flashlights out of the cars. Put what food we got in a pool. Try to do something about drinking water. There’s some kind of a big tank out back.”
Hal nodded. Malden stood up.
Jean Dorn sat on the blankets with her husband and her children and listened to the sound of the wind. It was a rhythm that could not be predicted. There were moments when it seemed to die, only to return stronger than before. The hard gusts came more frequently, and now there were times when it blew steadily for long seconds. The bolted shutters on the rear of the house shuddered and banged.
She wanted to touch Hal, to give him some kind of comfort. During the first hour they had been trapped in this place he had come out of his apathy and had seemed to her to be more alive than at any time during the past year. As in the days when his had been the strength she had leaned upon. Now the demand was upon her strength, and yet she could not give of herself to him. She knew she had to wait and hope and love him.
Far back in the misty simple beginnings of mankind, man killed meat with lusty swing of stone axe. With club and spear he fed himself and his family, and he built the fire that filled the mouth of the cave and kept the night creatures away. The weak ones and the fearful ones could not and did not survive.
Jean sensed that Hal’s defeat was as elemental as though it had happened a million years ago. She traced the analogy. He had been a good hunter in his own country. Then he had trekked to another land and found the game more scarce. He had hunted tirelessly, with all possible concentration of cunning. They had brought food with them, but, overconfident of success, they had eaten their supplies too rapidly. So the new land had defeated him before he had had time to learn the game paths, the new hunter’s tricks essential in this new place. So now they must trek back to the land they knew.
But the hunter felt that hand and eye had lost their cunning. He could resent these other mouths he must feed. He would equate them with his own survival.
On the way back they ran into trouble. And the hunter forgot for a time his uncertainty about himself, and responded instinctively with manliness and decision. Until an older man felled him too easily. Then he related this defeat to the defeat in the new land. He felt small and unworthy and inept.
Unless he could regain his pride and his confidence, the return home would do them little good, because the animals in the familiar region were also dangerous.
She shook her head to clear it of the odd dream, half amused at herself, and half depressed to tears. She looked at Hal’s thin, strong hands and slumped shoulders and wanted to touch him, to impart some of her own useless strength. These were not the years of club and fang, but the basic desires and emotions were the same. He had been unable to conceal his defeat from her. She had watched it. So this, too, could be a part of his resentment, because he felt shame.
He looked at her, his expression wooden. He patted Stevie clumsily on the shoulder. “Sorry I yelled at you.”
“Okay,” Stevie said with rigid dignity.
Hal stood up. “I got to help with the stuff.”
She smiled at him and nodded. He went to help Malden and Hollis carry the luggage upstairs.
Chapter 7
Virginia Sherrel went over to the window while the three men were carrying the luggage upstairs. She looked out at the storm through a crack in the heavy old blind. She could not see much — a tumult of waving branches, a scud of low dark cloud. She looked out at the storm and thought about Steve Malden. So intently was she thinking of him that she was utterly unprepared for the sound of his voice close behind her. The storm sounds had smothered his footsteps.
“How does your face feel?” he asked.
She turned, startled. “I... He didn’t hit me very hard, really.”
“The corner of your mouth looks swollen.”
“I think there’s a little cut inside. But just a little one.”
“If he’s what he claims to be...” He glanced around and then moved closer to her in order to be able to speak more quietly. “...you’ll be paid for your car. I think he may be what he says he is, but I also think there’s something funny going on. Maybe he was taking off with bank money. If he was, he got a bad break.”