When Curtis saw the light coming through the holes in the cladding-the few that weren't facedown in the ditch-fading from peach to gray, he realized he was actually going to spend the night in this stinking coffin with two inches of water on the floor and a half-closed toilet hole at his feet. He was probably going to die in here, but that seemed academic. To spend the night in here, however-hours stacked on more hours, piles of hours like piles of great black books-that was real and unavoidable.
The panic pounced again. He once more began to scream and pound the walls, this time turning around and around on his knees, first beating his right shoulder against one wall and then his left against the other. Like a bird caught in a church steeple, he thought, but could not stop. One flailing foot splattered the escaped turd against the bottom of the bench seat. He tore his pants. He first bruised his knuckles, then split them. At last he stopped, weeping and sucking at his hands.
Got to stop. Got to save my strength.
Then he thought: For what?
By eight o'clock, the air had begun to cool. By ten o'clock, the pud dle in which Curtis was lying had also cooled-seemed cold, in fact-and he began to tremble. He clutched his arms around himself and drew his knees up to his chest.
I'll be all right as long as my teeth don't chatter, he thought. I can't bear to hear my teeth chatter.
At eleven o'clock, Grunwald went to bed. He lay there in his pajamas under the revolving fan, looking up into the dark and smiling. He felt better than he had felt for months. He was gratified but not surprised. "Goodnight, neighbor," he said, and closed his eyes. He slept through the night without waking for the first time in six months.
At midnight, not far away from Curtis's makeshift cell, some animal-probably just a wild dog, but to Curtis it sounded like a hyena-let out a long, screaming howl. His teeth began to chatter. The sound was every bit as awful as he had feared.
Some unimaginable time later, he slept.
When he woke up, he was shivering all over. Even his feet were jerking, tapdancing like the feet of a junkie in withdrawal. I'm getting sick, I'll have to go to the damn doctor, I ache all over, he thought. Then he opened his eyes, saw where he was, remembered where he was, and gave a loud, desolate cry: "Ohhhh...no! NO!"
But it was oh yes. At least the Port-O-San wasn't entirely dark anymore. Light was coming through the circular holes: the pale rose glow of morning. It would soon strengthen as the day brightened and heated up. Before long he would be steam-cooking again.
Grunwald will come back. He's had a night to think it over, he'll realize how insane this is, and he'll come back. He'll let me out.
Curtis did not believe this. He wanted to, but didn't.
He needed to take a leak in the worst way, but he was damned if he was going to piss in the corner, even though there was crap and used toilet paper everywhere from yesterday's overturning. He felt somehow that if he did that-a nasty thing like that-it would be the same as announcing to himself that he had given up hope.
I have given up hope.
But he hadn't. Not completely. As tired and achey as he was, as frightened and dispirited, part of him still hadn't given up hope. And there was a bright side: he felt no urge to gag himself, and he hadn't spent even a single minute of the night just gone by, nearly eternal though it had been, scourging his scalp with his comb.
There was no need to piss in the corner, anyway. He would just raise the toilet seat lid with one hand, aim with the other, and let fly. Of course, given the Port-O-San's new configuration, that would mean pissing horizontally instead of at a downward-pointing angle. The current throb in his bladder suggested that would be absolutely no problem. Of course the final squirt or two would probably go on the floor, but-
"But thems are the fortunes of war," he said, and surprised himself with a croaky laugh. "And as far as the toilet seat goes...fuck holding it up. I can do better than that."
He was no Mr. Hercules, but both the half-ajar toilet seat and the flanges holding it to the bench were plastic-the seat and ring black, the flanges white. This whole goddam box was really just a cheap plastic prefab job, you didn't have to be a big-time construction contractor to see that, and unlike the walls and the door, there was no cladding on the seat and its fastenings. He thought he could tear it off pretty easily, and if he could he would-if only to vent some of his anger and terror.
Curtis seized the seat and lifted it, meaning to grip the ring just beneath and pull sideways. Instead he paused, looking through the circular hole and into the tank beneath, trying to make sense of what he saw.
It looked like a thin seam of daylight.
He looked at this with perplexity into which hope came stealing slowly-not dawning, exactly, but seeming to rise through his sweaty, ordure-streaked skin. At first he thought it was either a swatch of fluorescent paint or an out-and-out optical illusion. This latter idea was reinforced when the line of light began to fade away. Little...less...least...
But then, just before it could disappear completely, it began to brighten again, a line of light so brilliant he could see it floating behind his lids when he closed his eyes.
That's sunlight. The bottom of the toilet-what was the bottom before Grunwald tipped it over-is facing east, where the sun just rose.