But time passed, and there was no sound of Baron searching. Being in and out of awareness so much, it was hard for Grofield to tell how much time had passed, and so he kept believing it had been less than an hour, it must have been less than an hour or Baron would have begun his search by now.
He believed this as five hours went by, ten hours. The bleeding had stopped, the blood had caked and dried over the wound. For a while he shook with chills, a terrible cold he feared was the cold of death, and then for another while he ran with sweat and his face was fiery hot with fever. And still, in his lucid moments, he believed that less than an hour had transpired since he had closed himself away in this vertical coffin.
After fifteen hours he gave up. His stiff fingers loosened on the bed springs, his tense body relaxed, and he crashed forward, the bed opening and landing hard on its retractable legs, Grofield bouncing on the springs and then lying there sprawled out with his face against the springs.
Midday sunlight poured through the windows, shining on him. He was exposed, vulnerable, open to his enemy, but he was no longer aware of it. He had passed out again.
8
AT noon on Sunday Baron came to land, not because he had gone as far as he wanted but because the boat ran out of fuel. He had been fleeing south for nearly fourteen hours, and the scrubby rocky beach off to his right was Mexico, about two hundred miles south of the border, about twenty miles south of the village of Pesca.
He beached the boat, then went below in search of food. He hadn’t eaten since last night, hadn’t slept since the night before.
He noticed nothing wrong in the main cabin. Fatigue was part of the explanation, plus relief at having escaped once again, plus impatience to be off and moving.
There was little to eat on board. A box of Ritz crackers, some liquor and soft drinks, some cheese spread and a few cans of soup. Baron made himself a quick meal, tomato soup and crackers and cheese and some bourbon straight from the bottle, and then he went back on deck for a look around.
The area was deserted, as far as the eye could see. The land sloped upward gradually from the sea, then levelled out towards the distant horizon, and everywhere Baron could see it was the same; tan dry grassless earth, littered with small rocks and pocked with hardy clumps of desert greenery. The shallow water all around the boat was scattered with boulders.
This was some of the wildest country Baron had ever seen. Gazing at it from the deck of the boat, he was filled with misgivings. If only the fuel had lasted a hundred miles longer, enough to get him to Tampico, to civilization.
All right, that wasn’t important. He was free of the island, that was enough. Now there was nothing for it but to cross this semidesert until he found a road, a town, any sign of human habitation. From there on everything would be all right, everything would be fine.
He gathered up the suitcases, full of his worldly possessions, and went over the side. He waded to shore, holding the suitcases high because he didn’t know if they were waterproof or not, and when he reached dry land he set the suitcases down and sat awhile on a boulder to collect his breath and his thoughts.
He felt naked, without Steuber at his side. Steuber had been with him for a quarter of a century; it seemed impossible that Steuber now was dead. As though he and Steuber had somehow become Siamese twins, and it wasn’t possible for the one to be alive without the other one still living.
But that was nonsense. Self-interest, that was paramount. Steuber had merely been an adjunct, a crutch, an assistance in the problem of self-preservation. The problem still remained, without Steuber, and he could still face and solve it, without Steuber.
He got to his feet, picked up the suitcases, and started walking.
He walked west, due west, towards the sun. The suitcases, which had at first seemed so light, quickly became heavy, forcing him to make frequent stops for rest. He had brought the bourbon bottle along and used it sparingly to rinse out his mouth when it became too dry, but he soon saw he wouldn’t be able to survive too long without water.
There had to be a road, somewhere. He didn’t know Mexico very well, but he was under the impression there were plenty of north-south roads, coming down from the border towards Mexico City. He was surprised there wasn’t one skirting the shore, a scenic route for tourists who liked to look at the ocean.
Walking was not too easy. From time to time he stumbled on the stones the ground was littered everywhere with stones and then the suitcases banged painfully against his shins. The sun was very hot, the air was humid and heavy. Baron soon took off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, but within fifteen minutes his clothing was drenched with sweat.
Still, he wasn’t worried. This wasn’t the Sahara desert, it was Mexico, and Mexico was a civilized country. There would be a road, sooner or later, and he would walk until he reached it.
His shoes constricted his feet; within them his feet were burning. His arms ached from the weight of the suitcases. He blinked perspiration constantly out of his eyes, and when he licked his lips he tasted salt. More and more frequently he found it necessary to stop and rest.
He evolved a procedure, a method. He moved by the numbers, trudging forward two hundred paces and then stopping, setting the suitcases down, sitting on one of the cases or on the ground while he counted ten inhales and ten exhales, and then getting up and moving forward again another two hundred paces. In his imagination he could hear Steuber just behind him, counting aloud as he had always counted for the exercises. It was almost as though, if he were to turn suddenly, he would see Steuber there, stolid and patient, his watch held in the palm of his left hand.
The exercises had not been wasted. If he were not in perfect physical condition now, a man of his age, walking across this barren land this way, it might kill him. At the best it would take an impossible amount of time, maybe even result in his having to spend a night in the open air, lying on the rock-strewn ground.
The sun inched down the sky ahead of him, slowly becoming a nuisance, burning into his eyes, making him squint, making it difficult for him to see, so he tripped more often. He was most of the time out of breath, but he kept doggedly to the same pace, two hundred steps and a ten-breath rest, two hundred steps and a ten-breath rest.
He trudged slowly across the afternoon, the suitcases hanging from his arms like blocky weights hung there for a punishment. Dust puffed up around his feet at every step, and when his shoe brushed the stones they clicked together like pool balls. The landscape was unchanging, unpopulated.
In late afternoon the oppressive humid heat began to ease just a little, and the sun shrank from a white hell in the middle of the sky to a more comfortable yellow-red ball falling slowly towards the horizon. Still, even yellow-red it was too bright to look at directly, and Baron still had to shuffle forward squinting, his face covered with dust, his clothing heavy with the dust intermixed with perspiration. From time to time he had sipped at the bourbon bottle to cut the layers of dust in his mouth, but he hadn’t thought to bring any of the crackers or the other food from the boat, so now he felt a little lightheaded. But that was good, it made it easier to keep moving.
By sunset he had walked a full twenty-one miles due west from the sea and had not yet come to a road. As the sun edged down out of sight far away in front of him, as the swift evening closed towards night, Baron began at last to feel real apprehension. Where had he landed, on what mistaken, lost, useless, forgotten shore had he cast himself?
It took a conscious effort of will to keep from running.
When he saw the man, he at first didn’t recognize him for what he was, but mistook the seated figure in the failing light for only one more of the occasional boulders he passed. It was ahead of him, and as he came closer it seemed to him the boulder was odd somehow, wrong somehow. And then he recognized it for a man, squatting on a low rock, his rounded back towards Baron.