Russell came slowly to his feet and, using both his hands, brushed the sand off his back and legs as well as he could manage.
He looked at the cross again and knew that he would have to do something better than he had been able to accomplish heretofore. The only answer, he told himself, was to swim ashore and find there a longer piece of drift-wood to make a new upright for the cross and then sink it deeper in the sand. More deeply planted, it would not be so top heavy and might not tip so easily.
He walked across the sandbar to the river's edge and knelt there, dipping water with his two cupped hands to scrub his face. After he had washed, he stayed kneeling and looked out across the fog-misted plane of steel-gray water that moved with unhurried strength against the ragged background of the forest that crowded close against the other shore.
He had done it right, he thought. He'd followed all the ancient rules of hermitry. He had come to a waste place of the earth, deep in the wilderness, and had isolated himself on this sandbar island in the middle of the river, where there was none or nothing to distract him. With his own hands he had made and reared the cross. He had nearly starved. He had followed proper form in his petitioning; he had wept and prayed, humiliating both the spirit and the flesh.
There was one thing. One single thing. And through all these weeks, he knew, he had fought from knowing it, from admitting it, from saying it. He had sought to keep it buried. He had tried to make himself forget it, make his mind and consciousness erase it.
But it came bobbing to the surface of his mind and there was no way to push it back. Here, in the quietness of this day which had yet to come to life, he was face to face with it.
The transmitter in his chest!
Could he seek for a spiritual eternity while he still clung to the promise of a physical eternity? Could he play at cards with God and have an ace tucked up his sleeve?
Must he, before his petition could be heard, get rid of the transmitter in his chest, turn himself back into a mortal man?
He sank forward on the beach, collapsing.
He could feel the moist sand grinding on his cheek and when he moved his lips, the corners of them collected little gobs of sand.
"Oh, God," he whispered in his fear and indecision, "not that, not that, not that…"
30
The mosquitoes and the flies were bad and the packed earth of the wheel track that he walked in had been turned so hot by the sun that it burned the bare soles of his feet.
When he had finally paddled the floating tree trunk close enough to shore to reach solid land again, he had been forced to walk a half a mile or more through dense river bottom woods before he reached the road. In the process, he had encountered several nettle patches and, despite his attempts to skirt the plants, had been forced to walk through areas rank with poison ivy. The nettle rash still was full of fire, and the poison ivy blisters, he felt sure, would appear in a day or so. He faced rough times ahead.
For some miles he had feared the Loafers might come hunting him, but there had been no sign of them and by now he had come to the opinion that they were through with him. They had had their fun and there was nothing more that they asked of him. They had his car and clothing and all that he possessed and they'd tossed him in the river, hooting and whooping with delight, and that had been the end of it. 'They were not really vicious people. If they had been vicious, he'd likely not be here, walking doggedly down a wheel track, fighting off, with flapping hands, the mosquitoes and the flies, and itching almost unendurably from nettle stings.
He came to a creek, crossed by an old stone bridge, the rock of which it was built crumbling and scaling. Underneath it the creek ran sluggishly, only a few inches deep, over a bed of black alluvial mud.
Frost went on, crossing the bridge, following the grass-grown track, flailing with his hands to drive away the insect pests which swarmed all about him. But it seemed a hopeless task. He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and it came away smeared red with blood from the squashed bodies of mosquitoes, so intent on feeding they had not tried to get away.
As the day wore on to evening, he knew it would be worse. When dusk fell the flies would disappear, but the mosquitoes then would rise in clouds from the swamps and sloughs in the bottomland. The few that feasted on him now were only a thin advance guard of those which would come when dusk had fallen.
When morning came he would be a mass of welts, his body sluggish with poison from the insect bites. More than likely his eyes would be swollen shut. He wondered vaguely if mosquitoes could finally kill a man.
If he could build a fire, the smoke would help protect him. Out on a sandbar in the river the prevalent river breeze would keep the pests thinned down. Or, possibly, if he could climb die bluffs and find a breezy hilltop he'd escape the worst of the hordes which would rise from the swamps once darkness fell. He could not build a fire. And the thought of the climb to the bluff tops, or beating his way through the river bottoms back to the river's edge, left him shaken. The going would be rough and there would be poison ivy and there might be rattlesnakes and even if he reached
the river he might not be able to reach a sandbar. The only sandbar might be far out and he was not too good a swimmer.
But he realized that he must do something. It already was late in the afternoon and he did not have much time.
He stood in the road, squinting up the bluffs, covered with trees and rank underbrush and weeds, capped by cliff s of rock.
There might be another way, he thought. Slowly the idea seeped into his brain. He turned about and went back to the bridge, clambering down the bank to the shallow stream. Stooping, he scooped up a handful of the mud. It was black and sticky and it smelled. He smeared the handful on his chest. He smeared it on his arms and shoulders. He plastered great handsful of it on his back. Then, working more carefully, he smoothed some of it on his face. The mud stuck to him and protected him. The shrill whine of the mosquitoes still sounded in his ears and they swarmed before his eyes, but they did not alight upon the mud smeared upon his body.
He went on smearing mud, covered his body as best he could. It seemed that the coolness of the mud, perhaps even some antiseptic quality in it, eased the itching and the pain of the mosquito welts and the nettle rash.
And here, he thought, he squatted, a naked savage on the bank of this muddy stream—far worse off than he had been back on the city streets. For now he had nothing, absolutely nothing. Here, almost at the end of a trail he had taken without knowing why he took it, he was finally beaten. He had held before a faint and far-off hope, but now there was no hope. He could not cope with the situation he now faced. He had no equipment and no knowledge that would enable him to meet it.
Perhaps, come morning, he should go back up the road to join the band of Loafers—if they still were there, if they would let him join them. It was not the kind of life he'd planned, but they might give him, at least, a pair of pants, perhaps a pair of shoes. There'd be food to eat and probably work to do.
More than likely, though, they'd drive him away as soon as he appeared. For he was an osty and no one, not even Loafers, were supposed to have any truck with osties. There was just the chance, however, that they wouldn't give a damn. The might let him join the tribe as a sort of whipping boy, as a tribal jester, for his entertainment value.
He shivered as he thought of it, that he should be so reduced in fortune and in pride as to be able even to think of it.
Or perhaps now was the time to take that one last road of desperation, to seek out the nearest monitor station and apply for death. And in fifty years, or a hundred or a thousand, to wake up again and be no better off than he was this moment. They would, of course, remove the marks of ostracism once he was revived, and he'd be a normal man again, but that would be all he'd be. They'd give him clothes to wear and he would stand in line for food and he'd have no dignity and no aspirations and no hope. But he'd have immortality—God, yes, he'd have immortality!