Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“We’ll sue.”

“Good luck,” Justin said.

Ahead of them, the river spread out to merge with the sea, a conjoining of darkness. The channel lights weaved restlessly between the slow current and the force of the tide.

“You’re limping,” she told Holliwell. “A shame about your leg.”

“It was just a ploy,” he said. “To get you down to the beach.”

“You didn’t know I was there,” she said.

“No.”

“I’m being simple,” she said, “I’m so turned around.” Then she laughed a little and he was glad she did because he felt as though he had lied and it pained him. Of course he had not lied; he had not known. “It’d be like shooting off your toe.”

He knew that he was going to have to tell her. But not just now, he thought, when the weight was off her and she was trying to have fun. Wartime romance, nothing like it.

“When do you think you’ll be back in the States?” he asked.

“Hard to tell. As soon as we can get it done.”

“And when you laicize — what will you do then?”

“Get a job, I guess. I’ve got an RN. I might apply to medical school after all, if I can borrow the money.” She looked at him in mild reproach. “You’re asking me questions again.”

“I have to,” he said, “because you never ask me any. Otherwise how will we find out who we are?”

“We’ll never find out,” she said. They had come to the end of the railing. Beyond there was only mud and mangrove stumps and darkness.

“I hate to,” she said, “but I have to go back. Can we? My God,” she said, “I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Frank. Yes, of course. We’ll go back.”

The road and night took them up again; they sat alone with their Furies as the jeep splashed along. Justin sat ramrod straight behind the wheel as she had on the drive in — Holliwell was halfway back to Route Three, with a sense of being caught on the road in the villes after dark, expecting a mine or an ambush and ready to dive for a ditch if there had been one.

When the jeep pulled up before the mission, they stayed in their places listening to the night sounds. Somewhere in the distance, an English-speaking voice was raised in some frenzied incantation. Neither of them remarked on it.

“God,” she said, “how I hate this place and what it means.”

Holliwell climbed out of the jeep. Justin stayed where she was.

“Look,” he said, “let it go. It’ll be your past and you’ll have learned something from it. There isn’t a lot you could have done differently.”

“Six goddamn years,” she said. She took the keys out of the ignition, climbed out of the jeep and started to walk around it. “We could have done a lot differently. We could have helped people defend themselves … from these American flunky thugs that run things here. Instead of dispensing APC’s and holy water. Now it’s too late.”

He came around the jeep to her.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m blathering.”

When she looked at him, he saw that she was exhausted. Her face was drawn; she was near breaking.

“Nothing is too late for you, Justin. You’re young.”

She bit her lip and looked at the ground, her eyes wild again, like an animal looking for a way to run. His hand went out toward her as though he could not have held it back and he took her hand. It was trembling but dry, a small fastidious hand in his large sweating palm.

“My name is May,” she said suddenly. “I was born in May.”

“May,” he said, “I have to hold you a minute. You’re shaking.”

She looked up then and stared — past him, through him.

“No,” she said. “You can’t do that here. You don’t know what you’re doing to me. You can’t know.”

“You’re in trouble,” he said. “I think you’re in trouble. I’m coming back tomorrow.”

“You mustn’t do that …”

“I’ll come tomorrow. And if you think you have to — you’ll send me away.”

She only shook her head.

He forced himself away from her, walked to his rented jeep and started it up.

She was standing at the foot of the steps as he drove out. He could take his eyes from the roadway only for a moment to look at her; he tried to smile.

“Be careful,” he heard her call to him. May.

When the mountains and the aircraft beacon were in sight above the horizon, Pablo cut his speed back to nine knots and watched the Loran digits roll toward what he hoped would be the figures on Mr. Callahan’s line-of-sight chart. The dock lights on the chart were dimly visible now, a single glow below and to the right of the beacon. From time to time, he glanced at the Fathometer. The bottom was still in its place.

Two local shrimpers showed their working lights far off southward; the Cloud itself was showing no lights at all. As Pablo watched, the mountain beacon loomed ever high above him and through his glasses he could make out the little dock on which the dock lights shone. He could even see lights in the windows of the building behind the pier.

He cut his speed further; the rattle of his engines in the quiet night was making him nervous. He was swallowing another pain pill when the Fathometer suddenly plunged to ten feet and sloping up — he took manual control and came about; the DF signal after so many constant hours began to waver and wander in its tone. He turned it down. The zero-zero-zero course meant nothing now, he was up against a wall of coral, blundering for the Loran fix, trying for all he was worth to line up the beacon with dock lights at the proper bearing. The night seemed full of treachery.

He began to panic. Everywhere he turned the wheel, the marbles were waiting for him. Instincts of mindless flight possessed him. To turn seaward. To put out and follow the coast to the appearance of safety. Or to Negus’ promised islands of bliss, or San Ignacio or Colombia. But he could no longer believe in refuges, he dreaded the morning light and its exposure and dreaded more the open sea from which he had escaped and which was now beyond his managing. Whatever was done would have to be done here.

Half praying, drenched in sweat, he spun the wheel. Trying to put the light bearings where they should be, watching the Loran digits.

Suddenly there was a voice on the open CB. The voice sounded so close and clear that Pablo turned from his desperate work in guilty terror. It was as though someone were there.

“Mr. Fry? Do you copy? Mr. Fry?”

In the situation he was almost tempted to call for help. At the moment, nothing seemed worse than being where he was.

“Do you copy, Mr. Fry?”

He fought the impulse to answer and the voice desisted.

Once, when the bearings seemed right and the digital reading was square with Callahan’s, the Fathometer reading was less than fifteen feet. It was all wrong. Just before he spun her around, he saw his bottom reading fall off all the way to seventy, then eighty, then ninety feet. He laughed and swore and was cutting his engines when the terrible sound of something striking the hull shook him to his soles. He swung hard to port, knowing it would be too late — and ran to look over the side. There, in a light which was purely the illumination of God’s grace, was the marker, bouncing along his starboard side like a tin can along a windy street, until its anchor held it fast and it cleaved to his hull like a puppy.

“ Ave Maria purissima ,” Pablo said aloud.

The inshore current was already easing him toward the reef edge. Moving quickly, he released the windlass and let the chain play out. There was no extra line across the anchor crown — if it stuck fast, then he was stuck fast — he could not concern himself with that now. The current spun the vessel round so that her forepeak faced the open sea. Pablo looked at the ocean and trembled. He was sick and hurting, he wanted no more of it out there. More than anything he wanted to land.