Dark Nantucket Noon (31 page)

Mr. Biddle's voice had risen until it was a harsh cry. He sat down at last with a clattering thump of his cane, and the members of the Meeting breathed gratefully and welcomed the silence once again. Homer closed his eyes and allowed himself to be diverted by the oceanographic problem. The whole thing must have been a perfectly natural phenomenon. The east wind and the low tide must have combined to carry the water a long way out from the shore of the Red Sea, and then the people of Israel had been able to scuttle across a shoal that was normally under water, and of course there had been water both to the right of them and to the left. But then later on when the tide was coming back in again, the Egyptians had been tempted to follow, but by now it was too late. Before they knew it they were in the midst of the sea, with their chariot wheels dragging in the mushy sand and the water rising around them. The running tide was coming in fast, engulfing them, drowning them. The same thing could happen right here on Nantucket, if you had a bunch of scampering Israelites and a whole mess of chariots churning across the Old Man Shoal or Great Point Rip.

Homer opened his eyes for a moment, drowsily, then closed them again upon an apocalyptic vision. The pillar of fire and the pillar of smoke that had summoned the children of Israel rose up and up in his mind, twisting together in a mighty pattern of light and dark, rising to the throne of Almighty God, who appeared not as a man but as the sun itself at the staggering instant of total eclipse, mysteriously withdrawing himself behind the black moon (“Look not upon the face of thy God”). And suddenly this vision brought with it a streaming host of concomitant revelations. Perhaps the event described in Exodus had taken place at the time of the spring tide, there at the Red Sea. So it would have been a new moon or a full moon, and it might even have been the highest spring tide of the year, since it had sucked the water out so far and then drawn it back in again so high. It must have been pretty much like the time of the eclipse here on Nantucket. There was an east wind then too, and of course during the eclipse the gravitational attraction of the moon was
precisely
in the same direction as the attraction of the sun.…

It was five minutes before the hour in the Quaker Meeting House. The Meeting now seemed destined to end in silence, and the members of the congregation were composing their thoughts for a final moment of contemplative prayer. But they were reckoning too soon. A madman in the front row was leaping to his feet, moved by as powerful a spirit as had ever possessed him. To his wife's horror and to the dumbfounding of the sober members of the Meeting, Homer Kelly threw both arms in the air and addressed the deity in a thundering roar.
“My God, my God, I see it now. It
was
the moon. The moon did it, after all. Just the way Kitty said.”

Homer jerked his dazed wife to her feet, dragged her out of the room, and the Meeting broke up in confusion.

38

“… Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one tost sapling cannot, Starbuck!”

Moby Dick

Joe's house was empty. What kind of game was this? Kitty walked slowly to the middle of the room. “Alden?” she said uncertainly. But it was not Alden's presence she felt in the soft incoherent darkness around her. With a rush of dread Kitty became aware of the vengeance of Joseph Green. The place was his, it belonged to him, and he hated and detested her. Then there was a slight noise behind her, and Kitty screamed as the door slammed shut with a great shuddering crash of wood against wood. She ran back to it and rattled the latch, but the door held, and outside there were scraping sounds, and then a succession of jarring thumps as heavy pieces of lumber were shot across the door. They were great two-by-fours—Kitty had seen them on many a Nantucket house that faced the wind. She hammered with her fists on the door, and then shouted for help, her voice hoarse and cold with fear. “Alice? Alden?”

Silence.

Kitty turned her head, listening, looking this way and that for a cranny of light. But the darkness was absolute. Joe had bolted and barred the door. Was there another door at the back? Kitty thought there was, she thought she had seen it when she came in. Slowly she blundered across the room and felt for it and found it. But if the second door had been open before, it was closed now, and latched and bolted and barred like the other. She turned away from it and faced into the black volume of the room.

She had been blinded with one stroke. There had been the bright light and gray air of a clouded morning, and now suddenly she was imprisoned in the dark. But more terrible than the darkness was the menacing presence just outside, the sense of being closed in by walls of loathing as well as by walls of wood.

What did he want with her? What had he done with Alden and Alice? And what would he do with her now? In the midst of her fear Kitty remembered that she had been afraid in the dark like this before. It was the same dread that had engulfed her during the eclipse of the sun. The power of the moon had overcome the world. It had struck her down as it had struck down Helen Green.

Get a light. Stop gibbering. There must be some kind of light in this room. There would be no electricity, but there would surely be a kerosene lantern or a flashlight or something. Kitty shuffled along the wall, padding on her bare feet, feeling her way. She bumped into the back of a wicker chair, edged past it and nudged the edge of a table. Patting her hand over the table, she felt a row of books and a knobbed object that puzzled her until she ran the palm of her hand over the sloping keyboard—a typewriter. Groping further, she found what she was seeking, an erect glassy surface, a lamp chimney! Good. Now all she needed was a match. Kitty patted and patted the table, and fumbled along the wall past the front door and the window and the corner of the room and another window. Then her hand brushed against cobblestones. A fireplace! There would be a mantel, and on the mantel there might be a match. Quickly Kitty's eager fingers ran along the rough cement of the mantel shelf, colliding with a big clumsy object, which fell to the floor with a fluttering thump. There! Now her fingers were closing over a small box. Good, good, it was kitchen matches. With trembling fingers Kitty struck one against the side of the box. The light flared up, and swiftly she held out the match and stared into all four corners of the room. Thank God, she was alone. She began to breathe more easily. Her thumping heart subsided. She struck another match, walked back to the table, and lit the wick of the kerosene lamp. Then she picked up the lamp and carried it around the room with her, looking for an exit. One by one she struggled with the doors and unlocked the windows and heaved them open and thumped at the plywood shutters that covered them on the outside. Nothing gave way. She was locked and barricaded in. Well, then, she would look for something to beat her way out with.

What was that?

Kitty stood still in the middle of the room, the lantern in her hand, listening. Had there been a small sound?

It had stopped. Perhaps she had been mistaken.

She put the lantern on the mantelpiece then, and bent down to pick up the scattered object that had fallen to the floor. Sheets of paper were everywhere. They had tumbled out of a box and slipped under wicker chairs, under the bookcase, into the dead ashes of the fireplace. Patiently Kitty sought them all out, getting down on her hands and knees. She put them in a heap on the table and began straightening the pile. Then she stopped, transfixed by a word that jumped out at her from the topmost sheet of paper. It was her own name,
Kitty.

She read the entire page. Then, without being able to stop herself, she read the next. It was not in consecutive order, but like the first it was spotted with her name. And what the pages said—it was all true. Those things had really happened. She remembered them clearly, only here they were seen from the other side, from Joe's side. What did it mean that he had written about her? And what, dear God, was he doing to her now?

There!
The sound had come again. But it was a different sound this time, a kind of soft rustling, a windy rumbling from under the floor. Kitty turned around, then screamed again.

The house was on fire. Flames were licking up between two of the floorboards, bright tongues of flame. Instinctively Kitty seized a book from the table and slapped at the blazing crack, then thumped at another crack, and another. But it was useless. It was not the floorboards but the supporting timbers under the floor that were on fire, fanned by the wind blowing under the house.

She had to get out. Kitty snatched up one of the andirons from the fireplace and smashed it at the blank wooden surface of the window beside the door. But the solid shutter had been screwed in place, and the screws held. She smashed at another, then dropped the andiron in a fit of coughing. Smoke filled the room. The chimney wall behind Kitty suddenly thundered into a sheet of fire. Reason left her. Shrieking and coughing, she ran from window to window to window, then around again, pounding on them in turn with her fists. Then around again. From window! to window! to window! Then at last she flung herself against the front door, her hair aflame.

The door burst open. Pitching forward, Kitty staggered down the steps and fell. Then she rolled over and over, grinding her hair into the sand, struggling to breathe. At last she lay face down, gasping and shaking, as the cottage began to roar behind her and a streak of flame burst through the chimney and the roof gave way.

She sat up for a moment, shuddering, her eyes weeping, and then she pulled herself to her feet and walked quickly down to the water, wading into it, feeling its cool lapping touch on her bare feet. Then she looked up sharply. Where were Alden and Alice? Had Joe tried to kill them too? The truck was still parked where Alden had left it, but it was empty. Kitty shook herself, and began hurrying along the shore, heading south. She came upon her shoes, and sat down and put them on. Then she looked back at the truck again and saw to her surprise that it was no longer empty. Thank God, there was Alden! He was starting the engine, he was coming her way. Kitty jumped up, shaking with relief, and started running toward him. Alden drove faster, accelerating, charging along the beach in the truck, rushing toward her. Kitty stopped and waited for him. But instead of slowing down to pick her up, Alden revved his engine and plunged at her.

Startled, Kitty stepped back into the water, then flung herself out of his way, drenching herself all over, catching a glimpse of his intent face, his eyes shadowed under the visor of his hat. Now he was turning the truck sharply up toward higher ground, and bounding around in a narrow curve, his tires softly conforming to the shape of the pebbled beach. Now he was plunging at her again. Swiftly Kitty made up her mind. If it were like the terns, if it were like the time the terns had dived at her here in this place last June, then she could simply swim away from danger where the truck could not follow. But it wasn't like that, because Alden could swim after her easily and catch her and hold her under water until she drowned. No, no, she must try something else. Craftily Kitty ran north along the edge of the water, splashing half-in, half-out of the incoming tide. The truck lurched after her, a little higher up the beach, wallowing in the wet sand, sticking, lunging, rearing back and forth to free itself, pulling free with a grinding, rending roar and bucking forward once again. Splash in, splash out, draw him farther to his peril! Kitty was gasping but she couldn't stop to draw breath because the great whining high front of the truck was close behind her. Then suddenly it fell back, and glancing over her shoulder Kitty saw that it was caught once again, caught and held this time, and she darted ahead. Behind her the four wheels of the truck were burying themselves in clay that lay beneath the sand, clay that had fallen from the eroding cliff above the beach, that had lain at the bottom of a lake in glacial times, and now the wheels of the truck were churning and foundering in the clay and miring themselves further and further down.

Kitty was off and away, she was racing for the line of trees at the top of the bluff. Behind her she could hear the engine die, and looking over her shoulder again she saw Alden leap from the cab and stumble in the sand. His head was up, his gaze was upon her fleeing back. But she was up at the top of the bluff now, and deep in the juniper thicket, she was tearing at it, heedless of the clawing branches, making a wedge of her body, her elbows up before her face, thrusting, thrusting, her clothes catching and tearing on the furred bristling stems of the rugosa rose, on the intricate thorns of the cat brier, her arms pricked and lashed by the dense needled branches of the twisted junipers. With all her enfeebled power Kitty butted and shouldered her way through the dwarfed entangled oaks—and the trees fought back at her with the same harsh knotted strength that had netted them together before the wind. They clawed and clutched at her, and soon her arms and legs were slashed and bleeding, but she was hardly conscious of any pain. She was only aware of the sound of branches breaking behind her, of the ripping shove and thrust of the heavy body of Alden, who had more mass and weight and could force his way through faster. Again in this tangled maze he had the advantage. In her panic and confusion Kitty remembered bitterly the pretty lesson she had composed for herself, the vow she had made to thicken and intensify the days and weeks, to make them dense like the trees of the island—and now it was that very density that had caught her, and hedged itself about her. Her only hope was to hide, to find some nest into which she could burrow down, where she could lie very still while Alden went crashing over her, where she could curl herself very small in some dark spiraled chamber that was gathered in upon itself, huddled away from the light.…

Alden stopped suddenly beside a dwarf oak that was taller than the rest, and looked up at it, his chest heaving. Then he wiped his arm across his bleeding face and leaped into the sinuous branches. From there he could get a wide view of the treetops, and immediately he was rewarded. There was movement in the tops of the low junipers. Something was disturbing them. She was there ahead of him, circling around to the left. If he went around a little further to the west, then cut across, he would be upon her.…