The purplish claw of his left hand recaptured the silver toggle switch after several attempts. One finger hooked it backward, and the chair reversed away from the embankment with a final shower of stones and dirt. Whitmore leaped prankishly to one side to keep her feet from being run over.
Devore fiddled some more with his controls, turned the chair to face me where I stood in the water, some seven feet out from the overhanging birch, and then nudged the chair forward until he was on the edge of The Street but safely away from the drop off. Whitmore had turned away from us entirely; she was bent over with her butt poking in my direction. If I thought about her at all, and I can’t remember that I did, I suppose I thought she was getting her breath back.
Devore appeared to be in the best shape of the three of us, not even needing a hit from the oxygen mask sitting in his lap. The late light was full in his face, making him look like a half-rotted jack-o’-lantern which has been soaked with gas and set on fire.
‘Enjoying your swim?’ he asked, and laughed.
I looked around, hoping to see a strolling couple or perhaps a fisherman looking for a place where he could wet his line one more time before dark . . . and yet at the same time I hoped I’d see no one. I was angry, hurt, and scared. Most of all I was embarrassed. I had been dunked in the lake by a man of eighty-five . . . a man who showed every sign of hanging around and making sport of me.
I began wading to my right — south, back toward my house. The water was about waist-deep, cool and almost refreshing now that I was used to it. My sneakers squelched over rocks and submerged tree-branches. The ankle I’d twisted still hurt, but it was supporting me. Whether it would continue to once I got out of the lake was another question.
Devore twiddled his controls some more. The chair pivoted and came rolling slowly along The Street, keeping pace with me easily.
‘I didn’t introduce you properly to Rogette, did I?’ he said. ‘She was quite an athlete in college, you know. Softball and field hockey were her specialties, and she’s held onto at least some of her skills. Rogette, demonstrate your skills for this young man.’
Whitmore passed the slowly moving wheelchair on the left. For a moment she was blocked out by it. When I could see her again, I could also see what she was holding. She hadn’t been bent over to get her breath.
Smiling, she strode to the edge of the embankment with her left arm curled against her midriff, cradling the rocks she had picked up from the edge of the path. She selected a chunk roughly the size of a golfball, drew her hand back to her ear, and threw it at me. 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 CLONK! , 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, for 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.