He went back to the camper and the man pawed at him blindly. He lifted and gave him more water, then let him down again.
"Snake," said the man. The sound was half word, half croak.
The thunder growled again. It was darker now.
Snake, the man had said. A rattlesnake, perhaps. With the country going back to wilderness, the rattlers would be on the increase.
"Ill have to move you," he told the man. "I'll have to carry you. It may hurt, but…"
The man did not answer.
Frost glanced at his face.
He looked like a man asleep. He had drifted off into a coma, probably. More than likely he'd been drifting in and out of one for hours, perhaps for days.
There was, Frost told himself, no second way about it.
He had to carry the man to the farmhouse that sat atop the bluffs, get him under shelter, find some means to get him comfortable, build a fire, and get some warm food into him. The storm would break any minute now and he couldn't leave him exposed to its fury.
To make the trip he'd need the shoes the man was wearing and there were the trousers and the shirt that had fallen from the knapsack. Some food, too; he'd put a can or two of it in his pockets. And matches-he hoped there would be matches, or perhaps a lighter. He'd have to take the kettle along, tie it to his belt, perhaps. He'd need it when he warmed the food.
Two miles, he thought. At least two miles, and all uphill, over terrible terrain.
But it had to be done. A man's Me was at stake.
The man mumbled and muttered.
"Want another drink?" asked Frost.
The man appeared not to have heard him.
"Jade," he mumbled. "Jade—a lot of jade…"
31
Franklin Chapman was sitting on the bench in front of the library, waiting, as he had waited every Wednesday and Saturday evening since that night he'd talked with Frost, when the first pain hit him. For a moment the streetlights and the lighted windows in the apartment house across the street, the blackness of the trees and the shining, light-streaked surface of the street shifted and revolved like a somber kaleidoscope as he doubled over with the flaming splash of fire that went through his chest and gut and arm.
He stayed huddled, arms wrapped tight around his belly, face lowered above the chest. He stayed quiet and the pain slowly drained from chest and gut, but the left arm still was numb and through the numbness throbbed a misery.
Cautiously, he straightened up and fear touched one corner of his brain, whispering a suspicion of what had caused the pain. He should go home, he thought, or better yet, flag down a cab and ask the driver to take him to the nearest hospital.
But he had to wait, he told himself, just a little longer. For he had said he'd wait, from nine to ten two evenings of the week. And what if Frost should need him?
Although there had been no sign or word of Frost since that night when the cook had been killed in the alley back of the restaurant. And Ann Harrison was gone, too, without a.word to him that she was leaving.
What could have happened, he wondered, to the two of them?
He straightened carefully and laid the aching arm across his lap.
Funny how fuzzy he seemed to be. Just a little pain… The pain hit him again and he doubled up. Slowly he let out his sucked-in breath as the pain, after its vicious stab, ebbed from his body to leave him limp and shaken.
I must not die, he told himself. Somehow I must keep from dying.
He clawed his way erect and stood hunched beside the bench. Down the street he saw the dome light of a cab. He ran, half stumbling, down the walk toward the street, waving his right hand at the oncoming cab.
The cab pulled in and the driver reached back to open the door. Chapman stumbled in, slumped into the seat.
His breath was coming hard, whistling in his throat.
"Where to, mister?"
"Take me…" said Chapman, and stopped. For a sudden thought had struck him. Not to a hospital. Not immediately. There was another place that he must so first.
The cabbie was half turned in his seat, staring at him.
"Mister, are you all right?"
"I'm all right."
"You look a bit shook up."
"I'm O.K.," said Chapman. It was so hard to think. So hard to keep his thoughts straight. His mind was slow and muddy.
"I want to go," he said, "to a post office."
"There's one just down the street, but the windows will be closed."
"No," Chapman whispered. "Not just any post office. One particular one." He told the cabbie where it was.
The driver glanced at him suspiciously.
"Mister, you don't look so good to me."
"I'm all right," said Chapman.
He leaned back in the seat and watched the street slide past as the cab got underway. Most of the stores and shops were dark. A few lights still burned in the great hulks of the apartment houses. And just ahead was a church, with the burnished cross gleaming in the moonlight. Once, he remembered, he had gone to a church—for all the good it did him.
The night was quiet, and the city quiet, as it always was at night. He sat and watched it flow smoothly past him and there was in it, he found, a sort of peace. Earth and life, he thought, and both of them were good. The splashes of light that the lamps threw on the pavement, the padding cat, a part of the night itself, the painted signs advertising bargains, lettered on the windows of the shops—all these were things he'd seen before, but never really seen. And now, leaning back in the moving cab, he saw them for the first time, saw them as separate units which made up the city that he knew. Almost, he thought, as if he were saying good-by to all of it and was seeing it in an effort to remember it in the days when he'd be gone.
Although he was not going anywhere. First to the post office, then to a hospital, and when he reached the hospital he'd call home, for if he failed to call, Alice would vrorry, and she had enough to worry about without him adding to it. But no money worries. He felt good about that, thinking of the book and how she had no money worries.
The arm bothered him. He wished it would quit its aching. He felt all right now, except for the arm. A little weak and shaken, perhaps, but it was the arm that worried him.
The cab pulled up to the curb and the driver turned to open the door.
"Here we are," he said. "You want that I should wait?"
"If you please," said Chapman. "I'll be right out."
He climbed the steps haltingly, for it seemed to take a lot of effort. His legs seemed to drag and he was panting when he reached the top.
He crossed the lobby and found the box he'd rented weeks ago. The envelope, he saw, still was there—just one envelope.
B to F and back to A. He turned the knob slowly and carefully and it did not work. He spun the dial and did it once again and this time it opened. Reaching in, he took out the envelope and closed the box.
As he turned with the letter clutched in his hand, the pain struck at him once again—massive, brutal, terrible. Thundering blackness closed in upon him and he fell, not feeling the impact when his body hit the floor.
Moving in the hushed and glowing light of a brand-new dawn, the mind and consciousness of Franklin Chapman entered into the place called Death.
32
The storm burst minutes after he had started out and, carrying the man cradled in his arms, Frost struggled through a land filled with the blinding slash of lightning, bursting with the clap and roll of thunder that reverberated back and forth among the hills, while rain sluiced down in torrents and the very ground beneath his feet seemed to crawl with the sliding movement of the runoff water gushing down the slope. Above him the trees thrashed like giant creatures in the agonies of death and high in the great cliffs that crowned the hills the wind moaned and howled in the silences between the crashing of the thunder.