Stephen Carter - Emperor of Ocean Park

Outside, crunches and crashes as everything is dumped against everything else. The hurricane is, incredibly, getting worse. But maybe the eye has passed over us and we are getting the back part of the wind.

“I am perfectly willing to shoot you in the house,” Wainwright says calmly.

“Then why haven’t you?”

“Because that little bear might be another bluff. I am not about to underestimate you. You bluffed an expert in the cemetery. But we have talked enough. In thirty seconds, I am going to shoot off your kneecap, unless you give me the-”

A tremendous crash rattles the house, stunning us both. Pictures fall from the walls, crockery shatters in the cupboards. Justice Wainwright, no New Englander, is startled. He does not know what I know: that the bone-jarring impact was the sound of the chimney, blown loose by the hurricane, falling over flat against the sloping roof. Wainwright automatically looks up, alarm on his face, perhaps wondering whether the whole house is coming down.

The moment he is distracted, I dive, still clutching George Jackson, through the kitchen door and out into the storm.

The kitchen door opens onto a wooden stoop leading down into the tiny, pitted strip of browning grass that passes for a back yard. I leap down the steps and land with both feet in the marsh that the yard has become. I splash around the corner into the narrow alley that runs along the side of the house toward Ocean Avenue. I know Wainwright will follow me, because he has no choice, and I also know that my plan to use the hurricane has backfired in the worst way: I can run and shout as much as I want, but, even if I could be heard above the storm, there is nobody, not even a police officer, around to help.

For a moment, I am startled, almost overwhelmed, by the sheer majestic size of the angry clouds swirling low in the sky. Then I hear a gunshot smash into the side of the house next door, and I get my feet moving. Wallace Wainwright may be firing wildly, but that is bound to change, and I know too little about guns to figure out how many bullets he has.

Move!

My Camry, with its sparkling new rear bumper, sits parked on the verge, useless to me, because my keys are inside the house, in the pocket of my jacket. As I dart across the street, I hear Wainwright shouting and cursing somewhere behind me, but I dare not look back. He has nearly all the advantages. He has a rain slicker and a hat, while I am wearing sweats that are already sticking to my skin. He is wearing boots, and I am wearing sneakers that are already sloshing with water. He has a gun. I have a bear.

Emphasizing the point, a bullet thwangs off the pavement behind me. He is finding the range.

I have two advantages of my own, I remind myself as I slosh my way across the park, where the ground is saturated and water is simply collecting, nearly an inch deep, on the grass. One is that, ever since I was small, I have loved being outdoors in the weather when a storm strikes, at least on the Vineyard; my mother used to call me her water baby. My second advantage is that I am three decades Wainwright’s junior. On the other hand, I have been shot a good deal more recently than he has, and I do not have my cane.

In the middle of Ocean Park, a gust of wind knocks me flat against the white bandshell, and, pressing away from the wall, I turn to look. Wainwright is a shadow in the storm, still negotiating the wooden rail fence lining the road, but he will soon gain on me, because I have few places to which to flee. I feel sutures separating, muscles freshly pulled. I am exhausted, my legs aching from the effort of this short run. Even as out of shape as I am, I should be able to keep well ahead of the aging Justice. Unfortunately, my leg has not yet recovered from Colin Scott’s bullet, and I am hobbling, slowing inexorably as the trembling ache spreads outward from my wounded thigh.

Another gunshot, faintly heard beneath the roaring thunder. The storm is still my friend: the wind is ruining his aim.

I ran the wrong way, I realize. I should not have headed across Ocean Park, where I will be a sitting duck if he ever finds the range. I should have headed down the block, toward the stores-one might be open!-or the police station-a lone officer might be on duty! But Wainwright, the Vietnam combat veteran, has anticipated the tactic, circling in that direction, cutting off any hope I might have of running anywhere except toward the beach.

I will have to make my legs move if I want to see my son again.

And so I begin a sort of loping half-run, half-walk, beginning to hobble now because of a fresh searing pain in my abdomen, rushing toward the ocean, praying that the wind that keeps knocking me off stride and the drenching, buffeting rain that has already saturated my clothes will continue to keep him from aiming properly.

I cross Seaview Avenue, and a gunshot hits the metal railing separating the sidewalk from the beach. Wallace Wainwright is seventy-one years old and gaining on me.

For a moment I stand atop the rickety wooden stair running down to the Inkwell. Below me, savage waves lash the sand, stealing some of it forever. The jetty that usually marks the division between the life-guarded and unlifeguarded parts of the beach is invisible. Most of the waves are spilling nearly all the way to the seawall before falling back.

I do not want to go down there.

Wainwright is behind me, and I have no choice.

I struggle awkwardly down the steps, longing for my cane to help with balance, and with the pain.

I hear Wainwright shouting.

Hurrying, but wary of the raging sea, I reach the bottom step.

Which, old to begin with and now weakened by the storm, immediately splits in two under my weight. I go sprawling into the waves covering the sand, and George Jackson goes flying, landing in the water a dozen feet away, where he bobs tantalizingly.

My entire body is singing with pain. I want to stay down here in the cold water, let it carry me away.

Wainwright is descending the steps, but carefully.

I climb awkwardly to my feet and splash toward Abby’s bear, but the next wave knocks my legs out from under me again.

I struggle up again, lean into the water, stretch out my hand as something else tears, and then I have George Jackson in my arms again. But the chilly, whirling water is almost up to my waist, the waves are knocking me this way and that, and my energy reserves are nearly gone. The horizon is lost in angry gray-black clouds.

“All right, Misha, you did well.” Wainwright, a couple of yards away, in shallower water. His voice sounds ragged. “Now, let’s have it.”

I look at him, in his blue rain slicker and boots, so practical, so well prepared, never fooled by me for a minute, never tripped up by the box in the cemetery. He knew I returned to the Vineyard, knew why I waited for a hurricane. He knew everything. I am dizzy now, from the cold and the pain, and my will is simply too weak. His brilliance, his patience, his planning have beaten me. Still clutching Abby’s bear, I look at the small glittery gun, I look at Wainwright’s coolly confident white face, and suddenly I simply cannot do this any more. I have given what I can. I am worn out. Emotionally as well as physically. Maybe he will shoot me. I am too tired, too cold, too miserable to care. Sorry, Judge.

The saga of the arrangements is finally over. I know I am going to give him the bear.

I take a stumbling step toward the beach, holding George Jackson out in front of me, and I see Wainwright’s eyes go wide, and he backs away as though somebody is creeping up behind me, rising from the ocean to intervene at the last minute, Maxine or Henderson or Nunzio or some other armed avenger, but when I turn, what I see instead is a six-foot-high wall of black water, curling swiftly toward us.