“Where are you going to go?” he yells. “Are you going to cry every time you hear a stick crack?”
Malorie can’t get the rowboat free.
“Keep your blindfolds on!” she yells at the children.
The man said he’s seen one. When? When?
“You think I’m mad, don’t you?”
At last the paddle is planted hard against the earth. Malorie pushes, grunting. The rowboat moves. She thinks it might be free. Then it bangs against the man’s boat and she shrieks.
He’s trapped you.
Will he force their eyes open?
“Who’s the mad one here? Look at you now. Two people meet on a river . . .”
Malorie rocks back and forth. She senses a gap behind the rowboat, some kind of opening.
“. . . one of them looks to the sky . . .”
Malorie feels the paddle sink into the earth.
“. . . the other tries to steer a boat with a blindfold on.”
The rowboat is almost free.
“So, I have to ask myself . . .”
“Move!” she screams.
“. . . who here has gone mad?”
The man cackles. It sounds like his laughter rises toward the sky he speaks of. She thinks to ask, How far back did you see one? But she doesn’t.
“Leave us!” Malorie yells.
From her struggle, cold river water splashes into the boat. The Girl shrieks. Malorie tells herself, Ask the man how far back he saw it. Maybe the madness hasn’t set in. Maybe it’s slower with him. Maybe he will perform one final act of benevolence before he loses all sense of reality.
The rowboat is free.
Tom once said it had to be different for everybody. He said a crazy man might never go any madder. And the sanest might take a long time to get there.
“Open your eyes, for Christ’s sake!” the man shouts.
His voice has changed. He sounds drunk, different.
“Quit running, miss. Open your eyes!” he pleads.
“Don’t listen to him!” she yells. The Boy is pressed up against her and the Girl whimpers at her back. Malorie shakes.
“Your mother is the mad one, kids. Take off those blindfolds.”
The man suddenly howls, gargling. It sounds like something has died in his throat. How much longer before he strangles himself with the rope rail or lowers himself into the spinning propeller of his boat?
Malorie is paddling furiously. Her blindfold doesn’t feel tight enough.
What he saw is near. What he saw is here on this river.
“Do not remove your folds!” Malorie screams again. She is paddling past the boat now. “Do you two understand me? Answer me.”
“Yes!” the Boy says.
“Yes!” the Girl says.
The man howls again but he is farther behind them now. He sounds as if he’s trying to yell but has forgotten how.
When the rowboat has gone another forty yards, and the sound of the engine behind them is almost out of earshot, Malorie reaches forward and touches the Boy’s shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Mommy,” the Boy says.
Then Malorie reaches behind her and finds the Girl’s hand. She squeezes. Then, letting go of both of them, she takes the paddles again.
“Are you dry?” she asks the Girl.
“No,” the Girl answers.
“Use the blanket to dry yourself off. Now.”
The air smells clean again. The trees. The water.
The gasoline fumes are well behind them.
Do you remember how the house smelled? Malorie thinks.
Despite the horror of having encountered the man on the boat, she remembers. The stale, stuffy air of the house. It was there the day she arrived. And it never got any better.
She does not hate the man with the boat. She feels only sorrow.
“You did so well,” Malorie says to the children, trembling, paddling deeper down the river.
ten
Malorie has been living in the house for two weeks. The housemates subsist almost entirely off the canned goods from the cellar, plus whatever frozen meats remain in the freezer. Each morning, Malorie is relieved to find the electricity is still on. The radio is the only source of news anymore, but the last remaining DJ, Rodney Barrett, has nothing new to tell them. Instead, he rambles. He gets angry. He swears. The housemates have heard him sleeping on air before. But despite all this, Malorie understands why they continue to listen to him. Whether his voice is on quietly in the background or fills the dining room where the radio sits, he’s the very last link they have to the outside world.
Already, Malorie feels like she’s inside a vault. The claustrophobia is incredible, weighing in on her and her baby.