Neil looked up at him sadly. “Yes,” he answered quietly.
Frank lunged at Neil to grab him by the throat, but this time Neil fell to one side to avoid the charge and grabbed Frank’s left arm to pull him over and send him crashing into the back of the cockpit seat. Frank turned and reached for Neil again, but he pulled himself away. Blindly Frank got up to come at him a third time.
“Look, Frank, this is ridic—”
As Frank swung at him Neil ducked under the blow and slammed into Frank’s chest, sending them back against the cockpit seat, Frank crushed hard against it by Neil’s weight. The wind was knocked out of him, leaving him momentarily dazed. He felt Neil push himself to his feet and step back again, into the middle of the cockpit. Both men were gasping for air.
Frank looked up at him, feeling both a hatred that seemed to be unwinding out of control and a sad-little-boy impulse to cry, as if Neil were the neighborhood bully picking on him.
“Look, I know—” Neil began.
“You ever go down in her cabin again and I’ll kill you!”
Neil stood uncertainly a few feet away, his fists clenching and unclenching at his side, sweat matting the hairs on his chest.
“Don’t say that, Frank,” Neil said softly. “You don’t—”
“I said it! I mean it!” he shouted back. “Stop betraying me!”
Neil flinched at these words. Jeanne appeared behind him in her cabin entranceway, looking at Frank with a pained, frightened expression. Frank’s heart ached for her: how he wanted to protect her, care for her.
“It’s not Neil you should be angry with,” he heard her say to him.
“Damn it, Jeanne, how could you!?” he asked huskily. Again he wanted to cry.
“Get below, Jeanne,” Neil said, pushing her back with his left arm. Frank saw now that Katya, wearing Neil’s robe, was standing in the wheelhouse beside Macklin and Tony, watching. And Jim and Lisa had returned, too, and were also staring at him. He felt beaten. Slowly he brought himself to a standing position.
“Have…” he began, but had to clear his throat. “Have I made myself clear?” he said to Neil with as much coldness as he could command, the sounds coming out huskily, like the words of a dying man.
“Yes,” said Neil.
“Good.”
The images of the others were blurred, barely distinguishable— later he realized that he must already have been crying—as he moved past Neil, shoved himself between Katya and Tony, and returned to his cabin. He had lost everything.
Guiltily, unhappily, Jim and Lisa escaped Vagabond with Katya, in theory to barter for some additional food out at a commune at Salt Point, but in reality to get away from conflicts they couldn’t handle. They sailed with Oscar, Gregg, and Arnie and two young women from Scorpio. One was Oscar’s girl friend, Janice, a plumpish woman of thirty with short curly brown hair. The other was a slender, nervous young girl named Mirabai who was vaguely connected with Arnie. Both women—and the men, too, he realized—struck Jim as frighteningly passive and apathetic. None of them seemed to have any ideas about how they might survive what was happening. They were vaguely hopeful that the commune might feed and take care of them, and only Oscar seemed interested in joining Vagabond and sailing farther south. Gregg and Arnie, often stoned on grass, seemed indifferent even to the prospects of the commune.
The old racing ship moved sluggishly, and Jim noticed how tentatively Oscar and his crew handled her. He was worried by the small anchor they threw overboard, especially when they paid out so little scope that a fresh breeze might well blow them out to sea. Oscar explained that their big anchor had been stolen. When Jim suggested that it might be advisable to put out another hundred feet of anchor line, they thought it was a swell idea.
By the time the three from Vagabond rowed ashore at Salt Point with Oscar and Janice, it was after four in the afternoon. Then, as they were pulling the dinghy up onto the beach, Gregg’s shouts from Scorpio indicated that, even with the additional scope, Scorpio’s anchor was dragging with the rising wind. Oscar and Jim left the three girls and began rowing full speed back to the sloop. The three women were left to investigate on their own.
Salt Point was a barren peninsula stretching out from one of the three white enclaves that still survived on St. Thomas. It had become the unofficial home of a small group of homeless young whites and blacks.
As Lisa followed Janice and Katya into the low shrubs on their way across the peninsula toward the cove where Janice said the barter boat was reported to come, she moved reluctantly, unhappy at being separated from Jim. On the other hand she needed to be away from the tensions of Vagabond and looked forward to checking out the commune. Big Robby, the leader, preached that the end of the world was upon them—just three more weeks or something like that—and that all should take joy in the last days.
When they were halfway across the peninsula, they saw in the distance three or four rather dilapidated one-story wooden structures and some people. As they came nearer Lisa saw that two of the women in one group were bare-breasted and a man leaning back against the wall of one of the shacks was completely naked. Several people were smoking, and when they arrived at the clearing, she could smell the sweet odor of pot. A man with a bushy blond beard and long hair tied in a bun behind his head emerged from a shack near them. He was wearing cutoff jeans.
“Hey, welcome, good sisters,” he said. “I’m Thunder. Don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.” He grinned at Katya.
“We’re just visiting,” she said.
“We heard good things about you,” Janice added. “Thought we’d check it out.”
“That’s great, man, great,” Thunder said, smiling and looking from one to another and then back at Katya. “We’re getting dozens of new people every day. The last days are here and I guess everyone’s finally learning to groove.”
No one responded immediately to this, and in the pause Lisa introduced everyone to Thunder. A naked white man and a black girl walked by holding hands, the girl’s long hair falling down her back. Lisa noticed how skinny they both were and that the girl’s bony bottom was covered with a light coating of sand.
“We’re not much on clothes here,” Thunder went on, smiling. “Everyone’s free to do what they want. Bare-assed or tuxedo, it’s all cool here.”
“But bare-assed is cooler,” Katya commented, and Thunder laughed and reached out a bony hand to pat her on the shoulder.
“You’re right there,” he said. “Especially in this heat.”
“Is there someplace to get something to eat and drink?” Lisa asked.
Thunder’s face clouded. “There’s a cistern about two hundred yards past that last house. Just follow the path. But it’s getting low, so we have to ration. Our next meal’s about dusk—only an hour—but I doubt the girls are back from buying the fruit and fish.”
“We’ll survive,” said Lisa, tossing her dark hair away from her face.
“Yes…” said Thunder, looking at the three of them with a frown. “Hey, you know, I don’t want to preach, but you cats ought to loosen up a bit, enjoy yourselves. This is the peninsula of love, man, and Robby’s message is that we should joy in these last days. You folks appear a little down. Loosen up, man. Do what you will, but joy!”
They stared at him.
“We’re a little done in by our sail,” said Janice.
“Sure, man, I dig that. But you got to know that within a month the whole earth will be destroyed,” Thunder elaborated, his bearded face strangely expressionless as he spoke.