Hard. It whizzed by my left temple and splashed into the water behind me. “Hey!” I shouted, more startled than afraid. Even after everything that had preceded it, I couldn’t believe this was happening. “What’s wrong with you, Rogette?” Devore asked chidingly. “You never used to throw like a girl. Get him!” The second rock passed two inches over my head. The third was a potential tooth-smasher. I batted it away with an angry, fearful shout, not noticing until later that it had bruised my palm. At the moment I was only aware of her hateful, smiling face—the face of a woman who has plunked down two dollars in a carny shooting-pitch and means to win the big stuffed teddybear even if she has to blast away all night.
And she threw fast. The rocks hailed down around me, some splashing into the ruddy water to my left or right, creating little geysers. I began to backpedal, afraid to turn and swim for it, afraid that she would throw a really big one the minute I did. Still, I had to get out of her range.
Devore, meanwhile, was laughing a wheezy old man’s laugh, his wretched face crunched in on itself like the face of a malicious apple-doll. One of her rocks struck me a hard, painful blow on the collarbone and bounced high into the air. I cried out, and she did, too: “Hai!” like a karate fighter who’s gotten in a good kick. So much for orderly retreat.
I turned, swam for deeper water, and the bitch brained me. The first two rocks she threw after I began to swim seemed to be range-finders. There was a pause when I had time to think I’m doing it, I’m getting beyond her area of… and then something hit the back of my head. I felt it and heard it the same way—it went CLONI(! like something you’d read in a Batman comic. The surface of the lake went from bright orange to bright red to dark scarlet. Faintly I could hear Devore yelling approval and Whitmore squealing her strange laugh. I took in another mouthful of iron-tasting water and was so dazed I had to remind myself to spit it out, not swallow it. My feet now felt too heavy for swimming, and my goddam sneakers weighed a ton. I put them down to stand up and couldn’t find the bottom—I had gotten beyond my depth. I looked in toward the shore. It was spectacular, blazing in the sunset like stage-scenery lit with bright orange and red gels. I was probably twenty feet out from the shore now. Devore and Whitmore were at the edge of The Street, watching.
They looked like Dad and Mom in a Grant Wood painting. Devore was using the mask again, but I could see him grinning inside it. Whitmore was grinning, too. More water sloshed in my mouth. I spit most of it out, but some went down, making me cough and half-retch. I started to sink below the surface and fought my way back up, not swimming but only splashing wildly, expending nine times the energy I needed to stay afloat. Panic made its first appearance, nibbling through my dazed bewilderment with sharp little rat teeth. I realized I could hear a high, sweet buzzing. How many blows had my poor old head taken? One from Whitmore’s fist… one from Devore’s cane… one rock… or had it been two?
Christ, I couldn’t remember. Get hold of yourself, Jr God’s sake—you’re not going to let him beat you this way, are you? Drown you like that little boy was drowned? No, not if I could help it. I trod water and ran my left hand down the back of my head. Not too far above the nape I encountered a goose-egg that was still rising. When I pressed on it the pain made me feel like throwing up and fainting at the same time. Tears rose in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. There were only traces of blood on the tips of my fingers when I looked at them, but it was hard to tell about cuts when you were in the water. “You look like a woodchuck caught out in the rain, Noonan!” Now his voice seemed to roll to where I was, as if across a great distance. “Fuck you!” I called.
“I’ll see you in jail for this!” He looked at Whitmore. She looked back with an identical expression, and they both laughed. If someone had put an Uzi in my hands at that moment, I would have killed them both with no hesitation and then asked for a second clip so I could machine-gun the bodies. With no Uzi to hand, I began to dogpaddle south, toward my house. They paced me along The Street, he rolling in his whisper-quiet wheelchair, she walking beside him as solemn as a nun and pausing every now and then to pick up a likely-looking rock. I hadn’t swum enough to be tired, but I was. It was mostly shock, I suppose. Finally I tried to draw a breath at the wrong time, swallowed more water, and panicked completely. I began to swim in toward the shore, wanting to get to where I could stand up. Rogette Whitmore began to fire rocks at me immediately, first using the ones she’ had lined up between her left arm and her midriff, then those she’d stockpiled in Devore’s lap. She was warmed up, she wasn’t throwing like a girl anymore, and her aim was deadly. Stones splashed all around me. I batted another away—a big one that likely would have cut open my forehead if it had hit—but her follow-up struck my bicep and tore a long scratch there. Enough. I rolled over and swam back out beyond her range, gasping for breath, trying to keep my head up in spite of the growing ache in the back of my neck.
When I was clear, I trod water and looked in at them. Whitmore had come all the way to the edge of the embankment, wanting to get every foot of distance she could. Hell, every damned inch. Devore was parked behind her in his wheelchair. They were both still grinning, and now their faces were as red as the faces of imps in hell. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Another twenty minutes and it would be getting dark.
Could I keep my head above water for another twenty minutes? I thought so, if I didn’t panic again, but not much longer. I thought of drowning in the dark, looking up and seeing Venus just before I went under for the last time, and the panic-rat slashed me with its teeth again. The panic-rat was worse than Rogette and her rocks, much worse. Maybe not worse than Devore. I looked both ways along the lakefront, checking The Street wherever it wove out of the trees for a dozen feet or a dozen yards. I didn’t care about being embarrassed anymore, but I saw no one.
Dear God, where was everybody? Gone to the Mountain View in Fryeburg for pizza, or the Village Cafe for milkshakes? “What do you want?” I called in to Devore. “Do you want me to tell you I’ll butt out of your business? Okay, I’ll butt out!” He laughed.
Well, I hadn’t expected it to work. Even if I’d been sincere about it, he wouldn’t have believed me. “We just want to see how long you can swim,” Whitmore said, and threw another rock—a long, lazy toss that fell about five feet short of where I was. They mean to kill me, I thought. They really do. Yes. And what was more, they might well get away with it. A crazy idea, both plausible and implausible at the same time, rose in my mind. I could see Rogette Whitmore tacking a notice to the COMMUNITY DOIN’s board outside the Lakeview General Store.
TO THE MARTIANS OF TR-90, GREETINGS!
Mr, MAXWELL DEVORE, everyone’s favorite Martian, will give each resident of the TR ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS if no one will use The Street on FRIDAY EVENING, THE 17th OF JULY, between the hours of SEVEN and NINE RM. Keep our “SUMMER FRIENDS” away, too! And remember: GOOD MARTIANS are like GOOD MONKEYS: they SEE no evil, HEAR no evil, and SPEAK no evil!
I couldn’t really believe it, not even in my current situation… and yet I almost could. At the very least I had to grant him the luck of the devil. Tired. My sneakers heavier than ever. I tried to push one of them off and succeeded only in taking in another mouthful of lakewater. They stood watching me, Devore occasionally picking the mask up from his lap and having a revivifying suck. I couldn’t wait until dark. The sun exits in a hurry here in western Maine—as it does, I guess, in mountain country everywhere—but the twilights are long and lingering. By the time it got dark enough in the west to move without being seen, the moon would have risen in the east. I found myself imagining my obituary in the New York ’mes, the headline reading POPULAR ROMANTIC SUSPENSE NOVELIST DROWNS IN M^INE. Debra Weinstock would provide them with the author photo from the forthcoming Helen’s Promise. Harold Oblowski would say all the right things, and he’d also remember to put a modest (but not tiny) death notice in Publishers lek/y. He would go half-and-half with Putnam on it, and-I sank, swallowed more water, and spat it out. I began pummelling the lake again and forced myself to stop. From the shore, I could hear Rogette Whitmore’s tinkling laughter. IOU bitch, I thought, tau scrawny bi—Mike, Jo said. Her voice was in my head, but it wasn’t the one I make when I’m imagining her side of a mental dialogue or when I just miss her and need to whistle her up for awhile. As if to underline this, something splashed to my right, splashed hard. When I looked in that direction I saw no fish, not even a ripple. What I saw instead was our swimming float, anchored about a hundred yards away in the sunset-colored water. “I can’t swim that far, baby,” I croaked. “Did you say something, Noonan?” Devore called from the shore. He cupped a mocking hand to one of his huge waxlump ears. “Couldn’t quite make it out! You sound all out of breath!” More tinkling laughter from Whitmore.