The Fog Page 8

  “I don’t know. Reminds me of something. Sort of religious-like, I guess. Do they always do this?”

  “Only every hundred years.”

  “They never had anything like this back in Pasadena.”

  “Yeah,” said Nick, pulling over to the curb at the end of Main Street, “I believe you. That’s the part I could do without myself, the phony religious angle. What the hell do they think they’re honoring? Each other?”

  “They do that sort of thing at rock concerts sometimes,” she said. “Lighting matches in the dark and holding them up, you know? I guess it has to do with brotherhood or something.”

  Nick yanked the tire iron from under the seat and knocked the rest of the broken windshield out of the molding. A few stubby fragments remained on the hood, catching and reflecting the candlelight off their tough, prism-like edges. He cut the engine just as a pompous, self-congratulatory speaker’s voice blew their way on the PA system.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The mayor,” he said. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t vote for him.”

  “. . . And some have said,” the Mayor was proclaiming, “ ‘You can’t survive in Antonio Bay without big business.’ And we have said to them, ‘We survive in Antonio Bay because of the heart and soul of our people!’ ”

  Sure, he thought, run that stale mackerel up the flagpole one more time. Don’t kid yourselves. The Gospel of the Greenback, that’s what it’s really about.

  The crowd applauded in spite of the dripping candles in their hands. Do they know something I don’t? he wondered.

  “It sure is getting cold,” said Elizabeth.

  “We’re going inside.”

  “She’s probably not here now,” said Elizabeth. “She looked like she just stopped in to get a drink. She looked like she needed one.”

  “She’ll be here,” he said, “or somewhere close by. Believe it. This whole shindig is her baby. She’s been driving everyone crazy for months.”

  He steered her through the crowd and into the Elizabeth Dane Inn.

  The tables were empty, but a few unrepentant types were belly-up to the bar at the back, waiting it out. A grizzled old man, a salesman, a hooker from Canal Street. The sight of them there with their backs to the town square warmed the cockles of his heart.

  “You seen Mrs. Williams?” Nick asked the bartender.

  “Nicky!”

  It hit him hard now how much he didn’t want to have to face her. But it had to be done.

  She came at him with a double gimlet in one hand and a clipboard in the other, her hairdo breaking loose and her face beginning to shine under the subterranean lighting. There were crinkles sewn around her lips from holding so much in. He remembered those lips, and damned himself for it.

  “Nicky, thank God. Those incompetents at the Coast Guard switchboard won’t tell me a thing. But you were there. I want you to tell me. The life raft, first. Was it there?”

  “It was.”

  “Then—”

  “Then nothing. We don’t know more than that, Kath. Don’t work yourself up. We’ll just have to wait this one out.”

  “Is there a search party?”

  “A helicopter, yes. And two cutters, criss-crossing for miles in every direction. Kathy. Listen to me.” Close up, her eyes were switching back and forth between his, which made him more nervous. He saw the twitch, the wrinkling of her eyelids.

  “Yes?”

  “Christ, Kathy, I don’t know what to say to you.”

  There, it was out. He couldn’t help her. She was waiting for answers, but he wasn’t the one who could give them to her. Like old times.

  “Wait and see,” he said gently. “It’s been one day. Al’s too good a seaman to go over for no reason, without a struggle. Believe me, I saw it, and there were no reasons out there.”

  No reasons and no answers, he thought grimly, but an unholy number of questions.

  Nick touched Elizabeth’s arm. I could introduce her, he thought, but what’s the point? The President could walk in here right now and Kathy wouldn’t remember his name.

  “Two beers,” he said to the bartender. “Make one a boilermaker.”

  He motioned at Elizabeth. “Is she . . . ?”

  “God damn it!”

  “Sure, Nick.”

  “. . . And a Happy One-Hundredth,” said the voice of Stevie Wayne. “The Coast Guard . . .”

  The bartender reached for the volume, hesitated.

  “Go on, turn it up.”

  “. . . Just dropped me a note saying they located the Sea Grass earlier this afternoon, but there’s no further word as to the condition of the boat or the men on board . . .”

  As she continued with her bulletin, a red light washed over the walls of the Inn. Nick started for the door. Stevie Wayne’s voice was echoing from outside, as well, as through a loudspeaker.

  Sheriff Simms had double-parked outside the door. He sat listening to KAB a second longer, then shut off his radio and the red light on top of the squad car. He slid out and entered the Inn, a once-strong man with a potbelly, chewing the inside of his mouth.

  “Mrs. Williams,” he said, “that little lady on the radio is speaking the truth. The Guard’ll keep up the search for another half hour, and then the chopper will take over. Wish I could give you some news one way or the other, but it’s plain too soon to tell.”

  “I understand that perfectly,” said Kathy.

  “. . . I’ll keep you posted as the news comes in to me,” Stevie Wayne was saying over the bar.

  Now there was applause outside as the school band struck up a fanfare.

  “I gotta go,” said the sheriff awkwardly. “I’m up next. Mrs. Williams, you wait here. I’ll have a deputy bring you home as soon as, well, right now, if you say so.”

  “Might not be a bad idea,” said Nick.

  “No, thank you, Sheriff, I’m fine.”

  Simms left, gesturing apologetically, and ambled to the platform outside. Another round of applause went up from the crowd.

  “. . . Meanwhile . . .”

  “Turn that up,” said Nick.

  “. . . Hope no one gets lost out there in the fog,” said Stevie.

  There was, Nick noticed, an uncharacteristic tenseness to the usually mellow and relaxed sound of her voice. What was it she was saying? Hope no one . . .

  Kathy tossed down her gimlet, set it shakily on the bar, and made a stab at examining her clipboard schedule.

  “It’s funny,” she said, “but the only thing I can think about is my dog barking all night last night and me wishing—wishing Al would come home. And today, that dreadful business with Reverend Malone about something evil returning to the Bay . . . No, it isn’t funny, it isn’t . . .”

  She broke down momentarily. Nick moved toward her, but Sandy, the secretary with the frizzy hair, was there already, wrapping her arms around her.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Williams.”

  “I know you are, Sandy.” She straightened and dabbed at her eyes with the corner of a wadded-up handkerchief. “Now then,” she said. “We can’t have the chairwoman of the birthday celebration in tears, can we?”

  Sandy said, “You don’t have to go out there.”

  “Thank you, Sandy, but I think that’s exactly what I have to do.” She touched Nick’s face. “I appreciate all you’ve done.”

  “Yeah,” said Nick.

  When she had gone, he slammed his fist down on the bar.

  I should kick my own miserable ass around the block, he thought. What am I doing here? I should be someplace where I can do something real. The god damn hell of it is, I don’t even know where to begin.

  He poured down the shot of whiskey and chased it.

  Elizabeth was scrunched in the corner by the jukebox, her knees drawn up to her chest, meditating on her untouched beer. Nick stood in front of her, trying to come up with the right words.

  “What’s it about?” she said simply. “What is it that’s really happening? Can you plea
se tell me?” She didn’t seem afraid; she sounded as though she really wanted to understand. Her eyes were tired, swollen dark underneath, but not frightened—not at all frightened.

  He braced his knuckles on the table, speaking as much to himself as to her.

  “Something got into that steering house, blew out all the machinery, and dropped the temperature to twenty degrees. Something dry and cold drowned Dick Baxter and shoved him in the storage compartment like a pickled herring, and then took Al Williams and Tommy Wallace off the face of the earth. Something I’ve never run into before in my life.” God help me, he thought. God help them. God help us all.

  “Would you rather I go on to Vancouver?” she said calmly. “Would that make it easier for you? I will, if you say so. I want you to know that.”

  She wasn’t playing a game. She meant it. Her eyes never left his face. She looked like she was ready for anything he could say.

  The hooker came over to the jukebox. She slugged in a quarter and selected a country-and-western song. Nick glared at her and kicked the plug out of the wall. Outside, the band struck an off-key chord.

  He found himself listening again to the radio. Between drum rolls from the park, he heard KAB drifting in and out in the background. More music, forties stuff, in a perverse counterpoint to what was going on outside.

  “ ‘Hope no one,’ ” Nick repeated. “ ‘Hope no one . . .’ ”

  “What?” said Elizabeth. “I can’t hear you.”

  “The radio. Did you hear what she was saying a minute ago?”

  “You mean the DJ? No, why? Does it matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hope no one gets lost out there in the fog.

  That was it. What does she know about fog? What fog? There was nothing on the marine weather report about any fog.

  Something was taking shape in his mind, surfacing like a glacier. Could that account for . . . ?

  It didn’t add up. But neither did anything else. What else was there to go on?

  “Maybe it does,” he said, “maybe it does. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Stevie reached for a cigarette, and knocked the rest of the pack to the floor. When she leaned down to retrieve it, she dropped the first one. She sat up, arched her back against the swivel chair, and closed her eyes.

  The image of the burning wood was emblazoned on her retinas. She could clearly see what was happening, yet she couldn’t understand it.

  The record was nearing its end. Some Glenn Miller would go good right now, she thought, something nostalgic to ease us all back into our skins for the rest of the night. To ease me back, till I can get home to Andy. And bury that wretched thing down under the deepest part of the beach, or throw it out to sea from the top of the highest cliff. Yes, on the way home. There was no way in hell she was going to sleep with it in the house tonight. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, it was evil, she knew that—that was a given. She knew that much as surely as she’d ever known anything. She lifted a Glenn Miller album out of the rack, removed it carefully from its sleeve and tipped it toward the back-up turntable. And, as a rainbow of light shone into her eyes from the grooves, she dropped it with a dull thwap.

  It’s a good thing it’s only a re-pressing, she thought, and not an original.

  The reflection had come from the westward windows. Must be the Coast Guard helicopters, she thought, scouring the seas for those poor, lost fishermen. She knew the boat. It had anchored several times in the Bay a short distance from her house, and she and Andy had watched it through the telescope. Godspeed, she thought. It’s cold and dark out there tonight.

  The stylus had slipped over onto the next track. Too late. Let it go. Who’ll know the difference? They’re all in town tonight, playing with their memories like beads. The only thing that ever grabs them, anyway, is the jingles; face it. I ought to do a marathon, twenty-four hours of nonstop commercials. I wouldn’t even have to be here, just set up the cassettes on an endless tape loop and watch the ratings go over the top.

  It’s one hundred years ago today,

  So please now don’t you go away

  Until you take the time to say,

  ‘Fung-oo, Antonio Bay!’

  She realized she was sitting there with the unlighted cigarette in her mouth. She picked up her disposable butane lighter and struck it repeatedly, trying to fire it up, but the gnarled wheel would not catch. She set her thumbnail into it and flicked it hard, one last time.

  A pillar of fire shot at her face. She dropped the lighter like a hot potato. It went out automatically as she released it, but she kicked away from the console and sprang to her feet, brushing compulsively at her blouse.

  Somebody’s been messing with the adjustment, she thought.

  No, Stevie, you probably did it yourself, shaking and dropping things all over the place for the last half hour. Of course you did.

  She sat back down for a moment, daydreaming, her feet up. Then she banged her feet down and stood, tapping the table nervously and bouncing the lighter in her other hand.

  I know what I’ll do, she thought decisively, you bastard piece of God-forsaken wormwood. Let’s see how you like this.

  She reached for it without looking and went to the upper-level door. The board was coated with a fine, white residue left by the fire extinguisher. It felt like cold ashes or the powder off a dead butterfly’s wings. But it was quite dry.

  Not for long, she thought.

  Andy, you’ll just have to understand. I’m not going to lie to you.

  She went out to the guardrail.

  The night breeze tossed her hair and drove her eyelashes back into the sockets. It was a good feeling, fresh and clean, as always, though tonight there was a moldering scent of salt fish on the air, perhaps a harbinger of a coming red tide.

  She massaged the incipient gooseflesh on her arms, tied the board in her old blanket, and pitched it over the rail. It whistled on the way down, spinning and trying to fly like a shroud of bones, and disappeared into the scummy, mossy rocks below.

  Good riddance. Of course, there goes the evidence. Who’ll believe me now? Who would have believed me even if they’d examined it? The Smithsonian? The Cousteau Society? The First Church of Scientific Satanism?

  Inside, the phone rang.

  That’ll be O’Bannon. Answer it. If you can’t get dinner, get a sandwich. Sometimes weird friends are better than no friends at all, right, Stevie?

  “Hello, KAB.”

  “Hello. My name is Nick Castle. You don’t know me . . .”

  “No, I don’t. Is this another crank call? Because if it is, I’m fresh out of human kindness tonight. I’ve got a whistle right here around my neck, and I swear it’ll blow your eardrums wide open.”

  “No, I’m . . .”

  “Keep talking.” She rubbed her eyes. “So far I like the sound of your voice. There are a lot of voices out there. I’ve heard yours before, haven’t I?”

  “Listen, cut the crap, will you? I was one of the men who found the Sea Grass this afternoon.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. You see, things are happening here. I don’t know how to explain it. Go on. I really don’t have any further word on the . . .”

  “I know. I’m not calling about that. It’s what you just said over the radio. About the fog.”

  She had left the door open. The breeze gusted unexpectedly and scattered her papers over the floor. She stretched the cord and went to close it. Outside, the ocean was black and calm to the edge of the Bay.

  “You still there, Mr. Castle?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was a good, strong voice. She liked it. “This,” she began warily, “is going to sound a little bit strange, I’m afraid.”

  “What is?”

  “Just this.” How to begin? “I saw the fog last night. Out on the ocean, in the distance. It was . . .” Was there a word for it? “It was glowing.”

  On the other end, silence. Then the clink of a glass and a brass band far away, beh
ind his breathing. She tried again, as much for her own sake, desperate for a chance to come to terms with her experience.

  “I talked to the weather station about it. The way I get it, what seemed to be happening was this, at least according to their equipment. The wind was blowing east and the fog—the fog kept moving west. I know that sounds completely crazy. Don’t hang up.”

  “No,” said the voice, Nick, “right now it doesn’t sound crazy. That’s the goddamned hell of it.”

  “Listen, I’ve gotten a lot of phone calls, if you really want to know. Hello, Nick? Mr. Castle?”

  “I’m right with you.”

  “Something happened last night. That’s all I know for a fact. Horns went off, lights blew out, tires went flat for no reason. At the time, at the same time this fog or whatever it was was rolling in, this town started to come unglued. Am I going too fast?”

  She happened to look up.

  She let the phone dangle from her shoulder, swinging back and forth, the mouthpiece spinning over the turntable, as the record continued round and round, ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk, as the lights of her other telephone lines started to blink on and off, as something long and wide and translucent began to fold down over the horizon in her line of sight from the Point, closing over the water from a mile out, with no sound except for the chill whisper of the wind through the opening door. It was coming this way.

  She regained the phone. “Hello?”

  “Still here.”

  “Listen, there’s one other thing. It may have nothing to do with the Sea Grass.”

  “Anything.”

  She took a deep breath. “This morning,” she began, “my son found a piece of driftwood on the beach . . .”

  Elizabeth hung onto the open door, studying the winking flames in the park, hoping to remember them later.

  Kathy Williams’s voice faltered, and so did more of the candles, all of which were burning low by now. As she regained her composure and pressed on, the yellow seemed to brighten and grow stronger, spinning a unifying glow around the benches and tufted trees. It was uncanny. Or it was an illusion. Elizabeth wondered about it, and wished then that she were a photographer, that she had a camera with time exposure and color film to capture the unreal, fairyland image. It was exquisite; she had never seen anything quite like it.