Hurricane

Chapter 4

Now, as she drove north through gray rain, the bronze box was in the luggage compartment of the car. His death was something she could not comprehend. She sensed that she would never understand why it happened. But she knew her grief was soiled by the manner of his death. As she drove cautiously, automatically, her mind turned back to that morning twenty days ago, that ten o’clock morning in the small east-side apartment when she learned how it had all ended.

She had gone down after breakfast to get the mail. No letter from David. Then she had gone back up to the apartment and poured her second cup of coffee. She sat and looked at the bills and the circulars and read one letter from an old dear friend who now lived in Burlington and who wrote, “I suppose it is a sort of modern wisdom to take a vacation from each other, but damned if I like the sound of it. To have you and David indulge in such a thing is to me like the teeter and fall of great idols. Forgive me if I am too blunt, Ginny, but I can’t help thinking David needs, more than anything else, a sound spanking.”

She was annoyed as she read the letter. In her attempt to be light when writing to Helen, she had given Helen a distorted picture. It was not a “marital vacation.” It was a sudden queerness in David, a hint of breakdown.

It was then that the phone rang.

“Mrs. David Sherrel, please.”

“This is she.”

“I have a long distance call for you from Sarasota, Florida. Go ahead, please.”

Dim male voice blurred by miles, distorted by a jangling hum. “David?” she said eagerly. “David, is that you?” And as she asked, she could remember the last few lines of the letter she had written him. Lines she had worked over very carefully: “Please know that I try to understand to the extent that it is within my capacity to understand. I know that you feel this is important to you. If it is important to you, it is also important to me, darling. But please write to me. I think I deserve that much. I think you owe me that much, David. You have always had imagination. Think of what it would be like to be me and to be here and not know.”

“David!” she cried to the blurred phone. “I can’t hear you!”

“Please hang up,” the operator said, “and I will try to get a better connection.”

She hung up and sat by the phone and waited. She wanted to hear him say he was coming home, that this frightening thing that had separated them was over.

When it rang again she snatched it quickly. “David?”

“No m’am. My name is... Police Department... phone number in his wallet.”

“Police? What’s wrong? Is my husband in trouble?”

“Sorry to have to tell you this, Miz Sherrel, but your husband is dead. We got to get a legal identification on him, and I guess you ought to come down here. Hello. Hello? Miz Sherrel? Operator! Operator! We’ve been cut...”

“I’m still here,” Virginia said in a voice that sounded not at all like her own. It sounded cool and formal and controlled. “I’ll fly down. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” The man started to say something but she heard only the first few words before she hung up.

In the first few moments there was the shock, and then there was the sense of inevitability, so strong and sure that she wondered that she had not known at once when the phone had rung — she wondered that she had been so naive as to expect to hear David’s voice.

She phoned the airline and made a reservation on a flight leaving at five minutes of two. She rinsed the breakfast things, packed, closed the apartment, cashed a check, picked up her ticket and, after a short wait at Tampa International, she was in Sarasota at a little after eight in the evening. It was a still night, very hot. People walked slowly in the heat.

The man she talked to was large, soft-voiced, gentle. He had her sit down, and he told her what happened. “Your husband had been staying at a place called the Taine Motor Lodge, out on the North Trail. He hadn’t been making any trouble or anything, but he was acting kind of peculiar and Mrs. Strickie, she’s the manager out there, she was sort of keeping an eye on him. She’s got efficiencies out there. She noticed his car was in front of his place yesterday, and he didn’t go out in the evening, and this morning she got thinking about it and knocked on his door about eight and, when she didn’t get any answer, she used her key and went in and backed right out again, the gas was so thick, and called us right away. We got it aired out and he was on the kitchen floor, and this note here was on the table.”

She took the note and read it: “Ginny— It just wasn’t any use. It just didn’t do any good. I’m sorry.” It wasn’t signed.

“Is that his handwriting?” The questioning voice came from far away, echoing through a long metal pipe. She swayed on the chair, didn’t answer. The man went away and came back with a paper cup. She took it, lifted it, smelled the raw whiskey, drank it down.

She gave the cup back to him. “That’s his writing.”

“It checks out that he did it about midnight. Was his health bad?”

“No. He was in good health.”

“Money trouble?”

“No. He had a good job. He was on a leave of absence.”

“What kind of work did he do?”

“He was in the radio and television department of a large advertising agency.”

“Any children?”

“No. No children.”

“You know of any reason why he did it, Miz Sherrel?”

“Not... exactly. I think it was some kind of a breakdown. His work was very demanding. He felt that he had to get away for a little while. He thought that would help.”

“If you feel up to it, we can go over and take a look at him now and get that part over with. If you don’t feel like it, it can wait until morning.”

“I’m all right. We can do it now.”

And so it was done. David was gone. The body seemed to be the body of a stranger. It was familiar to her in contour, in the shape of each feature, but no longer known to her. They went back, and the man gave her the keys to the car. David’s things were packed in the car. She found a place to stay. The next morning she made the arrangements about cremation. Then she placed a call to Jim Dillon in New York, their lawyer, a classmate of David.

“Jim? This is Ginny. I’m calling from Sarasota.”

“That’s what the operator said. What are you doing down there, girl? How’s Dave?”

“David killed himself, Jim. They found the body yesterday morning. I flew down.”

“He what? Ginny! My God, why? Why did he do that?”

“I don’t think we’ll ever know. Jim, I need your help.” “Anything, Ginny. You know that. I think I could even come down there if...”

“No. No, thanks, Jim. I just don’t feel like coming right back and facing... everything. I suppose there are legal things that have to be taken care of. There’s the deposit box and things like that. There’s a will in it.”

“How big will the estate be?”

“Maybe thirty thousand. Somewhere around there. Then there’s the insurance. The policies are in the box.”

“Have you got money now? If you had a joint checking account, you won’t be able to write checks against it.”

“I have my own checking account. There’s enough in it for now, Jim. I just want to stay down here for a while. I don’t know how long.”

“How about the funeral?”

“I... I don’t think there’ll be any. He wanted to be cremated. I’m having that done. I’m going to phone his sister in Seattle and phone my parents. Maybe when I come back, I can arrange some sort of memorial service, but I don’t know about that yet. Can you do everything that has to be done?”

“Of course. Give me your address there. I’ll send stuff for your signature.”

She told him where she was staying. He told her how shocked and sorry he was, questioned her as to whether it was wise for her to be alone just at this time. He said he would inform the agency and let their friends know. She said she would write a note to some of the people. After they finished talking, she made the other two phone calls. They were both bad calls to make. When she talked to her parents, she was barely able to dissuade her mother from coming down.

“But what are you going to do. Virginia? Why are you staying there?”

“I have some thinking to do, Mother.”

“You can think anywhere. You can come here and stay with us and think here. This seems so insane.”

But in the end she won out, won reluctant acceptance. She drove around the city and decided she would rather live at the beach. She found a tiny apartment in a blue and white motel on Siesta Key. Her door opened onto the beach. It was September, and it was hot, and there were few tourists. In the mornings she would see the high white cloud banks against the blue sky, and on many days the hard rain would come down in the afternoon, dimpling and washing the sand and ending with the same abruptness that it had come.

She had wired Jim Dillon her new address. Legal papers came, and she signed them and sent them back. Sympathy notes arrived. The most careful and intricate one came from the advertising firm.

She spent her days in a quiet pattern. In the early morning, she walked on the beach. Later she lay under the sun, walking gingerly down to swim in the warm water when the heat became too great. The sun blunted her energies, softening the edges of her grief. She was a tall woman with a strong, well-made, youthful body, with black crisp hair, unplucked black brows, eyes of a clear light blue. The sun tanned her deeply and the continual swimming tightened the tissues of her body. She would come in from the dazzle of the beach and take off her suit in the relative gloom of the small apartment and, catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror, be startled by the vivid contrast of deep tan and the white protected bands of flesh.

The bronze box was in the back of her closet.

It was time to think, to wonder how she had failed. And to wonder what would become of her.

The marriage had lasted seven years. They had met in New York. She was from upstate New York, from Rochester. She was working in the fiction department of a fashion magazine when she met him. David had done two short pieces for them. Virginia had read them and thought them quite strange, but she had liked them. A third story, according to the judgment of the fiction editor, needed reworking. The fiction editor had made a luncheon date with David Sherrel and had been unable to keep it. Virginia was sent along to the midtown restaurant to meet him, armed with the manuscript, the fiction editor’s notes, and some money from the petty cash fund.

They had been awkward and earnest with each other during lunch. David turned out to be tall, slim, blond and — in spite of Madison Avenue manners and clothing — rather shy. He had curious moments of intensity, after which he would slip behind his façade.

She had been dating several men, but after lunch with David the others all seemed very predictable and tasteless. The second time she saw him, he was very drunk. The third time she saw him it became evident to both of them that they would be married.

It had seemed to be a good marriage. She felt needed and wanted. She learned to accept his moods of black, hopeless depression, accepting them as the evil to be balanced against a gift of gaiety, of high wild fun, of laughter that pinched your side and brought you to helplessness. There was the deep stripe of the erratic in him. He seemed to be always on the verge of losing his job, only to regain favor by some exercise of imagination that not only re-established him as a valuable man, but usually brought a pay raise. Though he sneered at his job and his work and could talk at length about the artificial wonderland of the advertising agencies, when he was in ill repute, he could not then keep food on his stomach, nor could he sleep without sedatives.

He had a gift for the savage phrase. He could use words that hurt her. But out of her strength and her understanding, she forgave him. His apologies were abject. His affection was as cyclical as his moods. There would be weeks when he would be warm, loving. Then would come the coolness, and he would withdraw physically to the point where, should she touch him inadvertently, she could feel the contraction of his muscles. And that hurt as badly as did the words.

David always bad very good friends, very dear and close friends who would adore him for two months or three before, out of some compulsion, he would drive them off. No friend remained loyal very long.

In spite of their private difficulties, they maintained a united front. He never spoke harshly to her when there was anyone around to hear him. She was grateful for that, as she knew her pride was very strong. She loved him with all her heart. She wanted his life to be wonderful. She did everything she could to make him happy.

It all began to go wrong right after the beginning of the current year. He slipped, day by day, further into a mood of depression. Yet this depression was not like the others. The others had been like the black clouds of brief violent storms. This was like a series of endless gray days, unmarked by any threat of violence. It seemed to her to be more apathy than depression. He went through his days like an automatic device designed to simulate a man. There seemed to be no restlessness in him — just a dulled acceptance. Although he had always been very fastidious, he began to shave and dress carelessly, and to keep himself not quite clean. She tried in all the ways she could think of to stir him out of it. She changed scenes, set stages, planned little plots, but none of them worked. When, in unguarded moments, she would wonder if he was getting tired of her, fright would pinch her heart.

One day, out of desperation, she set a scene so crude that in prior years it would have been unthinkable. While he was at the agency she went into the small study where he had used to work during the evening. She found and laid out the incomplete manuscript of the book. She laid out fresh paper and carbon and second sheets in the way he had liked to have them before he had given up work on the book.

That evening she had taken his wrist and smiled at him and tugged and said, “Come on.”

He came along without protest. She turned on the desk lamp and showed him what she had done. He stood and looked at the desk and then he turned and looked at her with an absolute emptiness in his eyes. An emptiness that shocked her. “God, Ginny!” he said tonelessly. “Good God, what are you trying to do to me?”

“I thought that if you...”

But he had walked out of the room. He walked out of the apartment. By the time she got her coat on and got down to the street, he was gone. He came back within an hour, and he was back down in the grayness of apathy, unreachable, untouchable. She apologized for what she had done. He shrugged and said it didn’t matter.

In June there was one day of gaiety. One day when he was like himself. Yet not like himself. There was an ersatz quality to his gaiety, as though it were the result of enormous effort — even as though this were a stranger, an actor, who tried expertly to become David Sherrel. That was the day they ordered the car and planned a vacation trip. By the time the car was delivered he had no interest in it, and she could not get him to talk about the trip again. She felt wasted. The empty days and the empty nights went by and she smothered her resentment and refused to admit to herself that she was thoroughly, miserably bored.

On an evening in late July he was quiet at dinner — it had been months since they had been out together or had anyone in — and finally, as though saying something he had memorized, he said, “I know that I’ve been a mess lately, Ginny. I don’t know exactly what’s wrong. I feel as if, somewhere, I’ve lost all motivation. I want to try to get it back.”

“I want to help you.”

“I don’t want help. I talked to Lusker this morning. They’re giving me a six month’s leave of absence without pay. Lusker suggested psychiatry. I don’t think that’s the answer. I want to get away for a while.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, darling. We could go back up to...”

“I don’t think you understand. I have to get away by myself. I don’t know why. But that’s what I have to do.”

She looked at him, and her face felt stiff, tight, as though covered with a fine porcelain glaze. “You have to do that?”

“Yes.”

All the angry words were close to the surface. She suppressed them. She stood up slowly and began to clear the table.

“It’s all right, then?” he asked.

“It looks as though it will have to be, David.”

He left two days later. She packed for him. She kissed him and told him to write. She went down to the car with him. He stood and looked at her, and he looked shy and lost, and she thought it was like sending a child to camp, or to war. He opened his lips as though to say something, then turned abruptly and got into the car. It was a Sunday morning in Manhattan. The streets were empty. She stood and watched the blue and white car turn the corner. She went back upstairs. She prepared carefully for tears. She put on a robe, stretched out on her bed with a big box of tissues at hand. She lay and waited for the tears. They did not come. She thought of the sweet little things and the sad little things, and tried, through pathos, to force tears. But they did not come. She realized she was trying to pump up tears the way some women seek out sad movies. She got up quickly, and on that day she gave the apartment the most thorough cleaning it had ever had.

He sent a card from Augusta and one from Jacksonville and a third and final card from Sarasota saying that he would stay there for a time and let her know should he move on. There was an address she could write to. She wrote often, not knowing if he even bothered to read her letters.

Now the marriage was quite over. It had ended.

She lay on the still hot beach, plastic cups over her eyes, feeling the sun grind into her body. And she tried to understand.

There were two things that had happened to her, long before David, that seemed to point out the direction of understanding.

One had happened in high school, during the first week of a course in Natural History. She could not remember the name of the instructor. He had been a small, wide, balding man with a sharp penetrating voice and a sarcastic manner. He had pictures of prehistoric animals and lizards and birds, cleverly faked.

In essence he said, “These creatures no longer exist. They died out. Their own development brought them to a dead end. They had some fatal flaw which finally made it impossible for them to survive in a changing environment. They could not adapt. It is an oversimplification to call them nature’s mistakes. They were just dead ends in nature’s endless experimentation.”

And so it could be possible to say that David had within himself the flaw which made survival impossible. The flaw did not have to be isolated and described. It could be enough to know that it was there.

The second incident had happened when, in college, she had had a date with a young instructor, a man named Val Jerrenson. As he was not permitted to date students, they had to be secretive about it. It had been a warm Saturday in May and they had gone down to an amusement park on the shore. They had been standing talking near a shooting gallery, and Virginia, looking over Val’s shoulder, saw the head of Val’s department walking toward them, frowning slightly.

Virginia had put her hand out quickly, and Val had taken it instinctively. Raising her voice a little, she had said, “Well, I have to run along, Mr. Jerrenson. Nice to run into you like this. I’ll have to catch up with the other girls.” She then looked directly at the head of the department and said, “Oh, Hello, Dr. Thall! I didn’t know Mr. Jerrenson was with you. I really have to run.”

When Val finally came back to the car, she was sitting there waiting for him, giggling.

After they had driven far enough to be safe, Val had looked at her with an odd expression and said, “You know, Virginia, you frighten me a little. You have such a perfect instinct for survival. Such a gift for living. You are an organism designed to function perfectly in its environment. Such strength is a little disturbing.”

So add the two together. The flawed organism. And the survival organism. Living together, making a life together. She sensed that the marriage had made her stronger, because it had called on her strength; it had demanded it. Yet she had not wished to be strong. She had wanted a man who could dominate her. In the very beginning she had thought David such a man.

Thus, if it had added to her strength, had it not also added to his weakness? Would not David have been better with a silly girl, a gay careless erratic clinging little thing? Or was the flaw too deep?

There was one thing that she learned during the long days on the beach. She learned that her love was not as great as she had thought it. It made her ashamed to realize that. Yet in all honesty, it was an admission she had to make. And it was the final act which had cut love down to a manageable stature. It had been such a childish and insulting death. It was as though, out of petulance, he had flung something at her, had struck her in the face with sticky unpleasantness. She had cared for herself, keeping herself as handsome as she could, as fresh and alive and sweet-smelling, ready and waiting for him. Through marriage his need of her had been sporadic. His withdrawn periods seemed a denial of her. And now he had consummated the final denial.

She could feel grief, a sense of loss, a sense of inadequacy — yet it was not a sharpness that pierced her heart. It was more like thinking of a death that had happened long ago. David had died long ago, and he moved through the eternity of memory, blond, slim, tall, with soft sensitive mouth, dulled eyes, a look of rejection. The ashes were soft and gray in the bronze box. And ashes had no life, no history. They were always old.

She knew at last when it was time to go back. When she awakened on Tuesday morning, she knew that she had spent enough time in this place. A healing process had finished. She could go back and face friends and dispose of his personal possessions and give up the apartment and find something to do.

She looked at herself with utmost clarity and knew that any job she could find would not be enough. She knew that she would look for a man. A strong man. A man with courage and integrity and a sure sense of his own place. She knew that, at thirty, she had never been more attractive. With this man she would find herself. He would not need strength to lean on. He would exude strength, and that strength would make her feel like a woman, rather than a mother or a guardian. There would be children, as many as she could have. And all this would not be a rebound from David. It would, instead, be an acceptance of the years lost, and a desire to do, with those that were left, what she had been meant to do from the very beginning.

When she left in the rain on Wednesday morning, she was more than a little amused at her careful planning, at her incredible certainty that the future would be just as she desired it.

Steve Malden drove steadily north on Route 19 in a dark green Plymouth sedan. He was a big man, big in every dimension, big in hand and wrist and shoulder — slow-moving, with a look of competence and power. His hair was black and thick and cropped short, and black brows nearly met over the bridge of his nose. His cheekbones were high and solid, his nose just enough hooked to give him an Indian look.

It was the first time in five years that Malden had driven anywhere without a specific mission, a clear idea of where he would go and whom he would see. This was supposed to be a vacation. That was what they had called it. But vacation was a word that was supposed to give you a lift, a feeling of anticipation and excitement — not this dulled restlessness. He had a vague idea of heading west, maybe swinging down into Mexico.

There had been no vacation in five years. He had not wanted a vacation, and he had not wanted this one. It had been forced on him. Bellinger, chairman of the committee had said, “Take a break, Steve. You can’t keep going on the way you are. You’re like a mechanical man. Take a break now or the job will break you.”

But time off was time in which to think and remember. And remembering was no good. It couldn’t bring her back.

In World War II. Malden had been a young sergeant assigned to the Counter-Intelligence Corps. He had liked the C.I.C. work and had done well at it. After his discharge he took police courses at Northwestern University, under the GI Bill. After he was graduated he spent a year on a big-city police force, then obtained a job with a national detective agency. Shortly after he went with them he married Dorothy Blackson, a stenographer in the home office. He did so well with the agency that, when the Florida Protection Committee asked for a fulltime operative, Malden was given an indefinite leave of absence to work for the Committee.

The Florida Protection Committee, even though financed and operated by private citizens, carried considerable weight in Tallahassee, and with the city governments of large cities in the state. It was formed by hotel owners, real estate operators and the owners and operators of legitimate tourist attractions. These men knew that too often the criminal element made deals with local enforcement agencies. Should that situation get out of control, Florida would be overrun by an element which could readily destroy the reputation the state was trying to establish and drive away the sound and respectable people who were contemplating retirement in Florida. Gambling, prostitution, dope peddling and the resultant theft and violence could never be completely eliminated. But, with proper investigative procedures and pressure applied at the right places, it could be held to a reasonable minimum.

Steve Maiden’s job was to establish sources of information, pay for information, protect informants, shadow suspects, observe illegal operations whenever possible and turn over thoroughly documented reports to the Committee for action on the state or municipal level.

The first year was a good year. Steve and Dorothy took a small house in Winter Haven. It was a central location for him. They were very much in love. She was a thin, blonde, luminous girl who gave an entirely erroneous impression of fragility. He knew she worried about him during his trips. He took her along whenever he could. The work was demanding and quite often exciting. The pay was good, and he knew the Committee was well satisfied with him. When he could steal a day, they would drive over to the beaches and swim and soak up the sunshine, then eat a dinner of the stone crabs she loved and find a motel. It often seemed to him that it was a honeymoon that would not end. They were suited to each other, enjoying the same things, laughing at the same things.

During that first year, he managed to obtain information on a new bolita ring operating in Tampa. Bolita is a variant of the numbers racket. The information Malden supplied was accurate; the ring was broken up and the court was unusually harsh with the offenders.

It was during his second year, five years before, that Steve Malden decided he could safely steal another day with Dorothy. They decided to drive over to Reddington Beach near St. Petersburg. It was a hot July day with thunderheads in the east. The rain held off until three in the afternoon. They stayed on the beach in the drenching rain, enjoying the coolness of it. Dorothy had taken on a lovely honey-tan in the hot months. After they ate, instead of finding a place to stay, Steve decided to check with an informant in Ybor City, a suburb of Tampa. He didn’t want to combine business with pleasure, but it was a very simple matter he wanted to check. The informant was a clerk in a cigar store, an elderly man with the thumb of his right hand missing. The man seemed very nervous. He refused to impart the information he had promised. Steve had left Dorothy in the car a block and a half away. It was a dark night, with thunder in the air and the threat of rain.

He walked back, puzzled and disappointed. Just as he reached the car he heard the scuff of a footstep close behind him. He had opened the car door. He whirled just as the shotgun blast tore a red hole in the night. The impact knocked him down and half stunned him. The pain in his arm was enormous. He tried to get up twice and fainted.

When he awakened in the hospital, he knew that he had been heavily drugged. His thoughts were blurred, his body heavy. When he thought of Dorothy there was a quick shrillness of panic, like a flash of light in a darkened room. But each time the light would fade because the drugged mind could not hold to any thought consistently.

Later, after he had slept and awakened again, they told him Dorothy had been hurt. They told him about his arm. The biceps had been torn, the bone splintered. On the operating table they had pinned the bone and sewn the muscle tissues. He would eventually regain full use of it.

There were police interviews, and they told him Dorothy had been seriously hurt, that she was on another floor of the hospital. He told the police that he had not seen the man behind the gun. He told them nothing else. On the third day, he got out of bed and refused to get back in until he had seen his wife. The doctor came and had him sit down and told him that the portion of the charge which had missed his arm had torn the throat of his wife, and she had died before the ambulance had reached the scene.

It was as though his life had stopped. The mechanics of living went on, but the essential substance was gone. His arm mended. The Committee offered him leave. He said he preferred to work. He disposed of Dorothy’s things. He moved heavily, stolidly, through the days that seemed to stretch out endlessly in front of him. He lost the gift of lightness, banter, casual conversation. For a time he drank heavily when he was off duty. He drank without pleasure, with a dogged desire to drug himself so that sleep without dreams would become possible. Then he found that he had somehow dulled his mind and his memories so that sleep could come, a dark animal sleep. He was without friends. For a time there were those who tried to bring him out of it, but they soon tired of thankless effort.

He ate and slept and worked. And he was able to accomplish a great deal. He moved through the state like a nemesis, always growing more crafty in blending with the background. His disguises were simple and effective. Tourist, sailor, fisherman, salesman. His reports were detailed, explicit, and the Committee translated them into action.

But the work was without joy. He spent uncounted hours in trying to find out who had fired the shot. The body of the informant was found in Tampa Bay a month after the shooting. And that was finally the end of the trail.

Five years had passed. Now you were thirty-two instead of twenty-seven. You would become forty-two and fifty-two, and she would stay back there in the past, still twenty-four, forever slim, clean-limbed, fragrant. Forever three months pregnant.

Malden knew that he would never have consented to this vacation had not something been slowly changing within him of late. It was as though some part of him was trying to lift the dark burdens he had carried so long. Some rebellious part that wanted to see the light again. This unexpressed yearning to come alive again was painful. It was like blood returning to a numbed limb. He preferred to move in the half-light of his chosen world. Her face was not clear to him any more. Time had begun to blur it. And it was less and less often that his heart gave its hard and sorrowful thrust when he saw a girl on a city street who moved like her, walked proudly as she had walked.

This then was the time of reassessment. This was vacation. He drove north on Route 19 through the hurricane rains, so accustomed to driving that it required but the slightest fraction of his attention. And because he was — or had been — a sensitive and perceptive man, he fought with a new demon on this day — one that he had at last faced squarely. The demon stated its case in the form of a question: Steven Malden, has this five years of darkness been the result of a legitimate grief, or has it been a time of self-indulgence? Have you been standing apart and admiring the dark and monstrous picture of your own heartbreak — indulging yourself in bathos and thinking it pathos? Have you fallen in love with the dreary picture of your own withdrawal from life, thinking it dramatic, a thing of splendor? Are you ready to raise your head a little and start to live again in any emotional dimension? Or are you so pleased with your own strength that for the rest of your life you shall refuse to share it with anyone?

The green Plymouth moved steadily north and the big silent man at the wheel remembered that he had not wept. Not once. He had felt something akin to pride: that his grief had been beyond tears. But pride seemed to be turning to shame. Had it been the other way about, she would have cried.

And, by now, she could have mended herself and could have been able to give of her own warmth to some second love.

Hilda moved up, through the Gulf of Mexico, ever more erratic, unpredictable. The rain soaked into the earth. It softened the black earth around the shallow root structure of tall Australian pines. Rain precedes the hurikan, and, when the wind comes, the tall pines topple readily. The runoff fattens the streams that run to the Gulf, raising the level, stretching the stem structure of the ubiquitous water hyacinth.

Hilda slowed and made a long gentle curve to the northeast, moving closer to the coast. She moved to within fifty miles of the mouth of the Suwanee River, and there all forward motion ceased. She remained in place, the whirling winds churning the Gulf. Once she had covered vast areas. Now the area was small. Even so she was large enough to flay the coast with hard gusts of wind.

The tide had been rising in the Gulf throughout the morning. High tide along the Cedar Key area was predicted for three in the afternoon. It was determined later that it must have been at about one o’clock when the hurricane, smaller and yet more violent than before, made a totally unexpected change of direction and began to move due east toward the Florida coast, moving at an estimated eighteen miles an hour, with the winds nearest the eye reaching a velocity that could not be measured. This was the dread combination of hurricane and tide that had long been anticipated by the pessimists of the low-lying coastland.