“Yar, I think—” He stood, cupped one hand around his mouth. “Chuckie boy! Hold the fort here. I got to row the missus out to see John. She wants to have a look-see at that busted wing of his.”
“Mr. Lewiston? Hey, ah—Mr. Lewiston, I don’t think—” A tug on his line distracted him. The end of his rod bent toward the water. He gave it an irritated glance, then returned his gaze to Harper and Don Lewiston. “Mr. Lewiston, you better wait before you go anywhere. I should clear it with Mother Carol first.”
Don tossed his rod aside, took Harper’s arm, and began to help her down into the rowboat. “’S’already cleared or Mama Carol never woulda let the nurse even come down here! Now I ain’t gonna let a lady fackin’ eight months pregnant try to row herself out there alone in this chop.”
“Mr. Lewiston—Mr. Lewiston, you got to hang on—” Cargill said, taking a step toward them, but still holding his rod, which was now curved in a long parabolic arc, the line straining at the end of it.
“You got a hit, Chuckie!” Don cried, stepping into the rowboat himself. “Don’t you dare lose this one, that’s Ben Patchett’s supper you got on your line! I’ll be back by the time you reel her in!”
Don bent to the oars and the boat took a herky-jerky jump away from the dock.
As he swept them out across the water, leaning all the way forward and then pitching himself all the way back, the oars banging in their iron rings and plunging into the water, Harper told him what she knew. When she got to the part about Carol setting Harold up, Don made a face like a man who has caught a whiff of something corrupt. Which was more or less the case, she supposed.
“And Ben Patchett was the triggerman for her?”
“It seems.”
He shook his head.
“What?”
“I can just about believe Ben would shoot the nasty little fatboy for her. Ben Patchett can talk himself into doin’ just about anything in the name of fackin’ protecting his people. But I can’t see him callin’ a Cremation Crew on Harold. Too many ways that coulda gone south. What if Harold squawked about Camp Wyndham before Ben had a chance to nail him? What if the Cremation Crew was heavily armed and put up a fight? Nope. I can see Carol doin’ it. She’s a hysteric. She don’t think through the consequences of her actions. But Ben has a careful mind. He’s half cop, half bean counter.”
“Maybe Carol called the Cremation Crew first and only told Ben her plan after. Then he was stuck trying to clean up her mess?”
Don nodded glumly.
“You still don’t like it.”
“Not by half,” Don said.
“Why not?”
“Because she don’t have the fackin’ cell phones,” Don said. “Ben does. How was she gonna call anyone? How would she even know who to call?”
Don took a last heave at the oars and drove the rowboat up into the muck. He hopped out and steadied her as she came to her feet.
“God, you got big alla sudden,” he said.
“I like it,” she said. “I look silly, I can’t run, and I can’t wear anything except sweatpants and extra-extra-large hoodies. But I like the idea of being so big I can easily trample over lesser beings. I don’t want to fight my enemies, I want to squash them beneath my tremendous girth.”
Don squinted back in toward shore, but it was too dark for either of them to see what Chuck Cargill was up to. Then he glanced past the shed, up to the top of the ridge. “This camp is about to turn into a fackin’ madhouse. I don’t think I’ll be missed for a few hours. I wanta look over the boat while I’m out here. See how sea-ready she is. Maybe I’ll even put ’er in the drink.” He cast another glance down at her belly. “If I had my druthers, we’d be on the water by tomorrow afternoon. That baby isn’t goin’ to wait and we might need a week or two t’get up the coast.”
“Go examine the boat. I can paddle back with Mr. Rookwood.”
Don walked her to the door of the shed, hand on her elbow, as if she were a recovering invalid. The Fireman answered the knock wearing polka dot pajama bottoms and his black-and-yellow rubber fireman’s coat over a grimy undershirt. He was starved, sweaty, needed a shave and a haircut, and he smelled like a campfire. Harper fought down the urge to burrow her face into his chest.
“Lazarus done rose from his fackin’ tomb,” Don said. He was almost quivering with pleasure, his big craggy face flushed with color. “The Father is awake. He asked for you. He wants to see you . . . and then he wants to see Carol. He got a sermon to preach to her, and lemme tell you, Johnny, I think this one might have some fire and brimstone in it.”
The Fireman scratched his hairy throat in an absentminded way, looking from Don to Harper. “I better put something on,” he said. Harper expected him to shut the door so he could change into a better pair of pants and maybe a sweater. Instead, he looked around in a kind of daze, until he spotted his helmet hanging off a nail by the door. He set it firmly on his head and breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced at himself in the square of mirror nailed up by the door, turned the helmet two imperceptible centimeters to the left, and beamed in delight. “There. Perfect. Shall we go?”
“Don is staying on the island. He’s going to put the boat in the water.”
The Fireman looked more surprised at this than at the news that Father Storey was conscious.
“Ah. I suppose you’ll be going as soon as possible.”
“Not too soon,” Harper said quickly.
“By the end of the week, if I have anything to say about it,” Don told him. “That baby isn’t going to wait around for when things are more convenient. It’s on the way. She ain’t got but four weeks at most. Sooner we get Nurse Willowes to Martha Quinn’s island and the hospital there, the better I’m goin’ to feel. But that isn’t the half of it. The nurse reckons Carol Storey might be leavin’ with us. After word gets out about what she’s done, she might like to take her leave under her own power . . . ’fore they run her out on a rail.”
The Fireman turned his gaze back to Harper, fixing her with a stare that had gone from foggy to fascinated in a very short time. “What has she done? I mean, besides using nineteenth-century punishments on her enemies, keeping Harper confined to the infirmary, and threatening to abduct her baby?”
“Two words.” Don waggled his overgrown eyebrows. “Harold fackin’ Cross.”
“I’ll tell you in the boat,” Harper said.
22
He was aghast at the idea that she would row them into shore alone.
“I’ll sit on the left,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt to use my left arm. You sit on the right. We’ll row together.”
“It’ll never work. The two of us will never be in sync. We’ll just go around and around in circles together.”
“Oh, it won’t be so bad. We’ve been doing that for months.”
She glared at him, thought he was having a laugh at her, but then he was bending to the bow of the boat, shoving it into the water, and she had to get beside him to help. A woman eight months pregnant and a man recovering from a chest full of busted ribs. To think Carol was afraid of either of them.
When they were out in the shallows she fell in over the side and then reached across the gunwale to take his hands and pull him in after her. His fireman boots squealed on the hull, grabbing for traction, and he thumped his lousy wrist, and his face went white. He squirmed onto the thwart beside her and she pretended she didn’t see him thumbing tears out of his eyes. She reached over and gently straightened his helmet.
They rowed, leaning forward and back, slowly and carefully, shoulders touching. The boat creaked and slid through the water in the night.
“Tell me about Harold Cross,” the Fireman said.
He listened with head inclined while she went through it again. When she was done, he said, “Harold didn’t have many friends in this camp, but I agree—when word gets out about what Carol did, calling the Cremation Crew on him and all, well. That’ll be the end for her. Sending her away with you is a great act of mercy, really. It’s easy to imagine it could be much worse.”