Charles Grant - Night Songs

"I am… was as you see me," he told her, wincing as the storm moved from howls to shrieks. He moved closer, to be heard. "I could not disgrace you."

"You wouldn't have."

"But I would," he insisted, wounded dignity in his eyes. "I would." Then he glanced up the road, back the way she had come. "It's over, then."

"It has been, for hours. Warren, we missed you, Gran and I."

He waved away her kindness. "He's in the sea, then?" She nodded.

"He let you do it?" He was astounded and relieved.

She reached out to touch him, and even through the topcoat he could feel her cold grip. "Gran is dead, Warren. Now he's buried the way they wanted." Closer, almost touching. "I don't think I want to stay in his house tonight."

Harcourt's expression was befuddled as he attempted to sweep aside the alcoholic fog he carried with him. When her hands moved to the back of his neck, when his skin felt her fingers idly twirling the ends of his hair, he tried not to shudder. She was bereft, he reminded himself; now she wants to go home. But he almost wept when he realized he couldn't remember where she lived.

"Atlantic Terrace," she whispered, as if reading his mind. "Just down from Peg Fletcher's, you know that. It's late. I'm a little frightened with all this," and she looked skyward, back to his eyes.

A slow and deep breath to steady himself, and he nodded. "I quite understand, Lilla. If you need someone to accompany you, you only have to say the word. I am always at your service, as you know."

She dropped her hand to his elbow and smiled at him broadly. "You'll be a gentleman?"

Offended, he almost drew away. "Always, Lilla. Surely you know that."

She giggled softly, kissed his cheek, pressed her forehead to his chin. Her voice was muffled. "You and I, Warren, we're alone on this island now. The others, they think they know what we go through, but they don't. Not really. They feel sorry for us, but they don't care." She looked up at him. "Do they care?"

He wanted to say yes, and knew instantly it was a lie.

"You see?" she said.

The wind was a hint of winter, and before he knew it he had his arms around her, drawing her into the warmth of his coat. So small, he thought. He hadn't realized how small she was, the girl-woman, the child. So small, and so soft; he startled himself by feeling things he had thought were long dead. One hand slipped down to the slope of her buttocks, the other into her hair.

They kissed.

Soft, he thought while her tongue searched for his. Soft. So soft.

He felt her trembling against him, and wanted to open his coat so he could feel her stomach and breasts and the ridge of her hips. But to open the coat would mean breaking the embrace, and it had been so long, so terribly long… so he hugged her instead and closed his eyes at the low groan that warmed the side of his neck.

"Are you shocked, Warren?" she asked softly.

He shook his head once. "It is a trying time for you, Lilla. Solace, comfort, it's what you need, what you deserve."

"Are you sober?" she asked then, and he almost laughed aloud.

"I would say, my dear, that I am about as sober now as I have been for years. That isn't saying much, I grant you, but it's the best you'll get tonight."

They clung beneath the wind and the lightning, against the battering of dead leaves, against the dust devils that leapt from the verge to the road.

She kissed him again, gently, not insisting, and when she lay her head tenderly on his chest he felt a thrumming through his clothes. He frowned for a long moment until he realized she was singing. Very quietly, virtually unheard as the wind brought the first rain. Then a connection was made, and he remembered El Nichols pushing him down the road, remembered turning around, remembered Lilla's night songs.

"Warren," she whispered, "are you alive?"

There was more than the night cold now working down his back. He pushed her away, but she held onto his arms.

"Alive?" she asked again.

"Of course," he snapped, trying to pry loose her grasp.

She smiled, and in a sudden blue-white flare he saw her eyes, the death there, and would not believe it. Nor could he believe the power in her hands.

He could think of nothing else to say but, "That singing…"

"You know the words?" she said, turning her head to see him sideways.

"I have had French, yes, and I've traveled a bit in my time."

"Warren-"

"And I am just drunk enough to be glad he's in the ocean."

"Oh, Warren," she said, shaking her head slowly. "Oh, Warren, dear Warren, he's not there, he's behind you."

A gnarled black hand from the dark grabbed his shoulder, and as he whirled to look behind, the razor she held measured the length of his exposed neck.

Then she left him upright in the shadows and walked back to the shack.

Hearing nothing but the wind, and her singing, and something behind her, drinking.

Another warm day, too warm for October, an August day misplaced in the middle of autumn. The rainstorm was gone, sweeping out to the Atlantic and up toward New York. What was left was the sun that turned the shallows turquoise, brightened the pines' green, shifted red leaves to vermilion and brown leaves to tan. The sea scent was strong, the breeze a welcome cooling, and Thursday a memory buried in a back closet.

It should have been perfect.

It should have been a quiet time of remembering, perhaps regretting, and looking forward to winter and the peace that it brings, forgetting for the moment that spring will start it all again.

But there'd been too many dreams spawned after midnight, too many arguments over a sun-bright breakfast, too many doors slammed and engines raced-and an unnerving feeling that an island four miles long and two miles wide was suddenly an island that had grown much too small.

The school on Haven's End was less than twenty years old and took care of the island's children until they were ready for high school across the bay in Flocks. The building was unimposing by any mainland standards: a single-story brick and gray-glass building raised on a high concrete foundation to keep the rooms from flooding when the occasional hurricane shrieked up the coast. Double doors at the entrance, high taxus and laurels to camouflage the concrete, and massive full pines at each of the front corners. The only sign it might be an official structure was the flagpole by the steps-tall, white, with a gleaming brass ball at the top gripped in the brass claws of a spread-wing eagle. Ocean Street ended almost at its front steps, as if the school were a monument facing a pitted tarmac mall, and behind were the woods that thickened toward the cliffs.

The morning blue, the noon sun, were slowly fading behind a haze.

At precisely two-thirty Colin was positioned in the entrance foyer, smiling and nodding as the children swarmed past him toward two days of freedom. Their shouts were infectious, their laughter a potion, and he rolled his shoulders with impatience to get on with the weekend while his left hand drummed a march on the flat of his thigh. Like his students, he felt that today was too beautiful to be spent inside. Heresy, he knew; a teacher's dedication supposedly knew no weather. But after the previous night's funeral he thought it a miracle the storm hadn't lingered to drench the town in stereotypical gloom. As it was, he'd had a difficult time of it from the moment he'd arrived. The kids and his colleagues seemed touched with electricity, a curious sort of tension that made them jump when spoken to, kept their eyes on the windows, had their attention wandering throughout their lessons-the kind of intangible crackling that preceded thunder.

He suspected the mood was caused by the Screamer. In the lounge, a colleague, Rose Adams, had detailed the effects of such a blow in '74. It had swept in before dawn, tides five and six feet above normal, streets flooded, windows shattered, more than a dozen automobiles pushed down Bridge Road straight into the bay. Luckily there'd been a warning, and most of the islanders had taken off for the mainland. Of those who'd remained, one had drowned on his lawn, another had been dashed to death against a wall by the wind and a fallen tree.

"Of course I'm not leaving," she said when he asked. "Do you think I'd miss one just because of a little wind?"

A throat cleared behind him, and he turned as he moved aside, the smile almost fading when he saw three students waiting, a girl and two boys.

"Excuse me, Mr. Ross," Denise Adams said politely as she brushed past him through the door.

"Have a good weekend," he said to the curly-haired brunette. "See you Monday."

She paused on the middle of five marble steps and looked back over her shoulder. "Aren't you going to the party tomorrow?"

He shrugged.

"Carter can vote, you know. You ought to talk to him. You always say every vote counts in any election." Then she smiled broadly. "I was eighteen last week. I can vote too."

Several comments came instantly to mind, all of them salacious and unbefitting his position; he grinned anyway, for the hell of it, to show her what he was thinking. Her large eyes widened, and her lower lip pulled between her teeth as she waved somewhat doubtfully and took the remaining steps at a deliberately slow march, her blue plaid shirt tight across her slender back, her jeans-encased hips swinging sharply side to side. The two boys with her ignored him completely. But he smiled at them as well, thinking the effort wouldn't kill him, though he decided not to ask why they weren't bringing home their books.

The smaller of the two, Denise's brother, Frankie, slapped her arm when they reached the sidewalk. She slapped him back, hard, before he could twist away, and muttered something Colin didn't hear as the door hissed closed. He sneered and ducked another blow, ran to the street and tight roped the center line. The second boy shot an arm around her waist and drew her close, leaned toward her ear and whispered with a leer. She slapped him too, but not nearly as hard as she had hit her brother. Then he looked back over his shoulder and gave a cold smile to Colin.

Colin nodded as if the smile were genuine.

"Sweet, isn't he," a deep voice said behind him. He didn't turn. He watched Carter Naughton walk with Denise up the street, his fisted right hand now buried in her hip pocket.

"He'll do."

"No, he won't," said Bill Efron. "None of them will. They come here three times a week for your tutoring, and I'll bet you your salary they still won't graduate high school in June. I tell you, Colin, there are times when I suspect they're not even human."

Colin laughed quietly. The principal had been fighting with Naughton and his friends for as long as they'd been alive, or so it seemed. Cart was nineteen, tall and muscular, his thick black hair greased to a gleaming and combed in a ducktail reminiscent of the fifties. Frankie, three years younger, tried desperately for imitation, but his curled brown hair wouldn't straighten, he was too skinny for a fitted T-shirt, and Colin didn't believe he really had the heart. Peg had agreed, which is why she kept him on as her stockboy and clerk-a chance for salvation, she'd said when he asked her.

Denise, on the other hand, was what he could only describe as saucy, and sassy, and much too old for her age. She also didn't need the extra work; her high school grades were quite adequate for passing. Though she denied it, he knew the only reason she came was because Carter commanded.

Efron sighed loudly, a frequent martyr to his profession, and pushed aside his tan cashmire jacket to tuck his thumbs around his alligator belt. He was white-haired and balding, his face a pink balloon slowly leaking air. His pale eyes were narrowed in a perpetual squint, a refusal to wear glasses when he was outside his office.