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was still fairly dry, indicating that a recent rower had crossed
from the island to the mainland.
"Think you can hold onto the rope if I let you down?" he
called.
She gave him a quick glance, then picked up the end she
had previously touched and tied a loop about her waist. She
began crawling toward the rail. Paul fought down a crazy
urge to pick her up and carry her; plague be damned. But hi
had already left himself dangerously open to contagion. Still,
he felt the drumming charges of conscience... depart from
me, ye accursed, for I was sick and you visited me not...
He turned quickly away, and began knotting the end of
the rope about the rail. He reminded himself that any sane
person would desert her at once, and swim on to safety. Yet,
he could not. In the oversized clothing she looked like a child,
hurt and helpless, Paul knew the demanding arrogance that
could possess the wounded help me, you've got to help me,
you damn merciless bastard!...No, don't touch me there,
damn you! Too many times, he had heard the sick curse the
physician, and the injured curse the rescuer. Blind aggres-
sion, trying to strike back at pain.
But the girl made no complaint except the involuntary
hurt sounds. She asked nothing, and accepted his aid with
a wide-eyed gratitude that left him weak. He thought that
it would be easier to leave her if she would only beg, or plead,
or demand.
"Can you start me swinging a little?" she called as he
lowered her toward the water.
Paul's eyes probed the darkness below, trying to sort the
shadows, to make certain which was the boat. He used both
hands to feed out the rope, and the light laid on the rail only
seemed to blind him. She began swinging herself pendulum-
wise somewhere beneath him.
"When I say "ready," let me go!" she shrilled.
"You're not going to drop!"
"Have to! Boat's out further. Got to swing for it. I can't
swim, really."
"But you'll hurt your "
"Ready!"
Paul still clung to the rope. "I'll let you down into the
water and you can hang onto the rope. I'll dive, and then pull
you into the boat."
"Uh-uh! You'd have to touch me. You don't want that, do
you? Just a second now... one more swing... ready!"
He let the rope go. With a clatter and a thud, she hit the
boat. Three sharp cries of pain clawed at him. Then muffled
sobbing.
"Are you all right?"
Sobs. She seemed not to hear him.
"Jeezis!" He sprinted for the brink of the drawbridge and
dived out over the deep channel. How far... down... down.
... Icy water stung his body with sharp whips, then opened
to embrace him. He fought to the surface and swam toward
the dark shadow of the boat. The sobbing had subsided. He
grasped the prow and hauled himself dripping from the chan-
nel. She was lying curled in the bottom of the boat.
"Kid...you all right, kid?"
"Sorry... I'm such a baby," she gasped, and dragged her-
self back to the stern.
Paul found a paddle, but no oars. He cast off and began
digging water toward the other side, but the tide tugged them
relentlessly away from the bridge. He gave it up and paddled
toward the distant shore. "You know anything about Gal-
veston?" he called mostly to reassure himself that she was
not approaching him in the darkness with the death-gray
hands,
''I used to come here for the summer, I know a little about
it"
Paul urged her to talk while he plowed toward the island.
Her name was Willie, and she insisted that it was for
Willow, not for Wilhelmina. She came from Dallas, and
claimed she was a salesman's daughter who was done in
by a traveling farmer. The farmer, she explained, was just
a wandering dermie who had caught her napping by the
roadside. He had: stroked her arms until she awoke, then
had run away, howling with glee.
""That was three weeks ago," said, "If I'd had a
gun, I'd have dropped him. Of course, I know better now,"
Paul shuddered and paddled on. "Why did you head
south?"
"I was coming here,"
"Here? To Galveston?"
"Uh-huh. I heard someone say that a lot of nuns were
coming to the island. I thought maybe they'd take me in,"
The moon was high over the lightless city, and the tide
had swept the small boat far east from the bridge by the
time Paul's paddle dug into the mud beneath the shallow
water. He bounded out and dragged the boat through thin
marsh grass onto the shore. Fifty yards away, a ramshackle
fishing cottage lay sleeping in the moonlight.
"Stay here, Willie," he grunted. "I'll find a couple of
boards or something for crutches."
He rummaged about through a shed behind the cottage
and brought back a wheelbarrow. Moaning and laughing at
once, she struggled into it, and he wheeled her to the
house, humming a verse of Rickshaw Boy.
"You're a funny guy, Paul, I'm sorry..." She jiggled her
tousled head in the moonlight, as if she disapproved of her
own words.
Paul tried the cottage door, kicked it open, then walked
the wheelbarrow up three steps and into a musty room. He
struck a match, found an oil lamp with a little kerosene,
and tit it. Willie caught her breath.
He looked around. "Company," he grunted.
The company sat in a fragile rocker with a shawl about
her shoulders and a shotgun between her knees. She had
been dead at least a month. The charge of buckshot had sieved
the ceiling and spattered it with bits of gray hair and brown
blood.
"Stay here," he told the girl tonelessly. "I'll try to get a
dermie somewhere one who knows how to sew a tendon. Got
any ideas?"
She was staring with a sick face at the old woman. "Here?
With "
"She won't bother you," he said as he gently disentangled
the gun from the corpse. He moved to a cupboard and found
a box of shells behind an orange teapot. "I may not be back,
but I'll send somebody."
She buried her face in her plague-stained hands, and he
stood for a moment watching her shoulders shiver. "Don't
worry... I will send somebody." He stepped to the porcelain
sink and pocketed a wafer-thin sliver of dry soap.
"What's that for?" she muttered, looking up again.
He thought of a lie, then checked it. "To wash you off of
me," he said truthfully. "I might have got too close. Soap
won't do much good, but I'll feel better," He looked at the
corpse coolly. "Didn't do her much good. Buckshot's the best
antiseptic all right."
Willie moaned as he went out the door. He heard her crying
as he walked down to the waterfront. She was still crying
when he waded back to shore, after a thorough scrubbing. He
was sorry he'd spoken cruelly, but it was such a damned relief
to get rid of her...
With the shotgun cradled on his arm, he began patting
distance between himself and the sobbing. But the sound
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