The water began to rise again, but not fast. Curtis was actually glad about this, now that he had determined there was no actual risk of drowning like a rat that has tumbled into a toilet bowl. At least it was water, and he was very thirsty. He lowered his head to one of the holes in the steel cladding. Water from the overflowing ditch was bubbling up through it. He drank like a horse at a trough, sucking it up. The water was gritty, but he drank until his belly sloshed, constantly reminding himself that it was water, it was.
There may be a certain piss content, but Im sure its low, he said, and began to laugh. The laughter turned to sobbing, then back to laughter again.
The rain ended around six P.M., as it usually did this time of year. The sky cleared in time to provide a grade-A Florida sunset. The few summer residents of Turtle Island gathered on the beach to watch it, as they usually did. No one commented on Curtis Johnsons absence. Sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasnt. Tim Grunwald was there, and several of the sunsetters remarked that he seemed exceptionally cheery that evening. Mrs. Peebles told her husband, as they walked home hand in hand along the beach, that she believed Mr. Grunwald was finally getting over the shock of losing his wife. Mr. Peebles told her she was a romantic. Yes, dear, she said, momentarily putting her head on his shoulder, thats why I married you.
When Curtis saw the light coming through the holes in the claddingthe few that werent facedown in the ditchfading from peach to gray, he realized he was actually going to spend the night in this stinking coffin with two inches of water on the floor and a half-closed toilet hole at his feet. He was probably going to die in here, but that seemed academic. To spend the night in here, howeverhours stacked on more hours, piles of hours like piles of great black booksthat was real and unavoidable.
The panic pounced again. He once more began to scream and pound the walls, this time turning around and around on his knees, first beating his right shoulder against one wall and then his left against the other. Like a bird caught in a church steeple, he thought, but could not stop. One flailing foot splattered the escaped turd against the bottom of the bench seat. He tore his pants. He first bruised his knuckles, then split them. At last he stopped, weeping and sucking at his hands.
Got to stop. Got to save my strength.
Then he thought: For what?
By eight oclock, the air had begun to cool. By ten oclock, the pud dle in which Curtis was lying had also cooledseemed cold, in factand he began to tremble. He clutched his arms around himself and drew his knees up to his chest.
Ill be all right as long as my teeth dont chatter, he thought. I cant bear to hear my teeth chatter.
At eleven oclock, Grunwald went to bed. He lay there in his pajamas under the revolving fan, looking up into the dark and smiling. He felt better than he had felt for months. He was gratified but not surprised. Goodnight, neighbor, he said, and closed his eyes. He slept through the night without waking for the first time in six months.
At midnight, not far away from Curtiss makeshift cell, some animalprobably just a wild dog, but to Curtis it sounded like a hyenalet out a long, screaming howl. His teeth began to chatter. The sound was every bit as awful as he had feared.
Some unimaginable time later, he slept.
When he woke up, he was shivering all over. Even his feet were jerking, tapdancing like the feet of a junkie in withdrawal. Im getting sick, Ill have to go to the damn doctor, I ache all over, he thought. Then he opened his eyes, saw where he was, remembered where he was, and gave a loud, desolate cry: Ohhhh no! NO!
But it was oh yes. At least the Port-O-San wasnt entirely dark anymore. Light was coming through the circular holes: the pale rose glow of morning. It would soon strengthen as the day brightened and heated up. Before long he would be steam-cooking again.
Grunwald will come back. Hes had a night to think it over, hell realize how insane this is, and hell come back. Hell let me out.
Curtis did not believe this. He wanted to, but didnt.
He needed to take a leak in the worst way, but he was damned if he was going to piss in the corner, even though there was crap and used toilet paper everywhere from yesterdays overturning. He felt somehow that if he did thata nasty thing like thatit would be the same as announcing to himself that he had given up hope.
I have given up hope.
But he hadnt. Not completely. As tired and achey as he was, as frightened and dispirited, part of him still hadnt given up hope. And there was a bright side: he felt no urge to gag himself, and he hadnt spent even a single minute of the night just gone by, nearly eternal though it had been, scourging his scalp with his comb.
There was no need to piss in the corner, anyway. He would just raise the toilet seat lid with one hand, aim with the other, and let fly. Of course, given the Port-O-Sans new configuration, that would mean pissing horizontally instead of at a downward-pointing angle. The current throb in his bladder suggested that would be absolutely no problem. Of course the final squirt or two would probably go on the floor, but
But thems are the fortunes of war, he said, and surprised himself with a croaky laugh. And as far as the toilet seat goes fuck holding it up. I can do better than that.
He was no Mr. Hercules, but both the half-ajar toilet seat and the flanges holding it to the bench were plasticthe seat and ring black, the flanges white. This whole goddam box was really just a cheap plastic prefab job, you didnt have to be a big-time construction contractor to see that, and unlike the walls and the door, there was no cladding on the seat and its fastenings. He thought he could tear it off pretty easily, and if he could he wouldif only to vent some of his anger and terror.
Curtis seized the seat and lifted it, meaning to grip the ring just beneath and pull sideways. Instead he paused, looking through the circular hole and into the tank beneath, trying to make sense of what he saw.
It looked like a thin seam of daylight.
He looked at this with perplexity into which hope came stealing slowlynot dawning, exactly, but seeming to rise through his sweaty, ordure-streaked skin. At first he thought it was either a swatch of fluorescent paint or an out-and-out optical illusion. This latter idea was reinforced when the line of light began to fade away. Little less least
But then, just before it could disappear completely, it began to brighten again, a line of light so brilliant he could see it floating behind his lids when he closed his eyes.
Thats sunlight. The bottom of the toiletwhat was the bottom before Grunwald tipped it overis facing east, where the sun just rose.
And when it faded?
Sun went behind a cloud, he said, and shoved his sweat-clumped hair back from his forehead with the hand not holding the toilet seat. Now its out again.
He examined this idea for the deadly pollution of wishful thinking and found none. The evidence was before his eyes: sunlight shining through a thin crack in the bottom of the Port-O-Sans holding tank. Or perhaps it was a split. If he could get in there and widen that split, that glowing aperture into the outside world
Dont count on it.
And to get to it, he would have to
Impossible, he thought. If youre thinking of wriggling into the holding tank through the toilet seatlike Alice into some shit-splattered Wonderlandthink again. Maybe if you were the skinny kid you used to be, but that kid was thirty-five years ago.
That was true. But he was still slimhe supposed his daily bicycle rides were mostly responsible for thatand the thing was, he thought he could wriggle in through the hole under the toilet seats ring. It might not even be that tough.
What about getting back out?
Well if he could do something about that seam of light, maybe he wouldnt have to leave the same way he went in.
Assuming I can even get in, he said. His empty stomach was suddenly full of butterflies, and for the first time since arriving here at scenic Durkin Grove Village, he felt an urge to gag himself. He would be able to think more clearly about this if he just stuck his fingers down his throat and