Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [113]
McDermott brings his hand to his forehead. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “You didn’t.”
From the other room, Sexton Beecher roars his wife’s name.
A bucket in the sink is full of red water. The sole of McDermott’s shoe is sticky on the wooden floor. He glances around at the yellowing paper on the walls, the small white stove with a crusty pot on top of it, the cupboards that have no doors. “I’ve got to go,” McDermott says, brushing against Ross. “They shouldn’t come here. It’s too risky.”
But then a woman in a shimmery blue dress, her copper hair ablaze in a pool of sunlight, is standing on the porch behind the screen door. Alphonse sneaks around and under Vivian and opens the door. Honora, in her slippers, her blouse untucked from her skirt, her hair wild about her head, walks into the room.
McDermott knows that he will never again want anyone or anything as much as he wants this woman.
“Where is he?” she asks.
Alphonse
He wishes someone would shut Marie-Thérèse up, because she is being very annoying and is not helping the situation one little bit. His house is crowded with men looking sick and hot and wishing they were somewhere else. His mother is holding a bloody towel, and inside the other room Mrs. Beecher is with her husband, who is just howling like an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Alphonse is standing with Miss Burton in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, and Miss Burton is being very calm and speaking to Mrs. Beecher and McDermott, and you can just see that in this kind of a situation women are much better than men.
Ross says, “Where’s Wing?” and Alphonse thinks maybe he should have been the one to go for the doctor instead of Gérard, and Mahon is telling Mironson, who looks as if he is going to throw up, to leave immediately, and it is then that Alphonse hears the cars in front of the house and the metal doors slamming, and the room goes absolutely quiet.
Oh, Jesus, Ross says.
Sexton
Someone is pressing an iron against his leg and it is just searing his flesh, burning his flesh, and he is trying to buck it off, but there are hands on his arms and he hears his wife’s voice saying his name over and over, and he tries to sit up, but she pushes her hands against him, and for the sake of almighty God, will someone just get this fucking iron off his goddamn leg? He can hear his wife calling for someone to help her and then there are stronger hands on his, and when he looks up he can see a man’s face, what is his name? he can’t remember, he should be able to remember, and the iron is pressed against his skin again, and he screams his wife’s name. He can hear her saying, “I am here, I am here,” but it is hard to pay attention because the pain is so great, and then he looks up at her and tells her he is sorry, although he is not completely sure what he is sorry about. But he knows that he is and that he has hurt her, and that she didn’t deserve to be hurt, and then there is a pressure on his chest. The girl, Vivian, is saying does Honora know that he has been hit twice, and Honora is leaning over him and telling him something he should be paying attention to and he tries to hang on so that he can make sure he has heard her right, but he is being carried away by a river and he really, really wants to let go. And then he hears the big guy, what’s his name? the hulking beast from a fairy tale, say Oh, Jesus from the kitchen.
Vivian
“He’s been hit twice,” Vivian says to Honora, wondering if anyone has noticed that Sexton Beecher is bleeding from another wound just below the first one. It’s perfectly possible no one has discovered this because there is so much blood. She feels a small movement beside her, and Alphonse sneaks under her arm to take a peek into the living room.
“I don’t think you want to look at this,” Vivian says, turning the boy toward her body and enveloping him. He is just a boy, after all, and he shouldn’t be a part of this. As best she can make out, Sexton fired a shot at a wall of policemen, which seems like an extraordinarily