Chapter 7
As a dull gray light began to invade the interior of the Edsel, Hardcastle lay on his back, staring up toward the now-visible carpeted floorboard, listening to the sounds of the river as the water level continued to slowly rise outside the overturned car. He felt a suspicious pitching movement beneath him, similar to a boat at anchor, and he thought their perch on the rocks was now becoming tenuous at best. It was apparent that their situation would soon be changing for the worse, and he knew he should wake McCormick and let him know how things stood; for that matter, he should already have woken him, just on general principle. Concussions were tricky things, and skull fractures even trickier, and with that knock on the head, there was no way McCormick had managed to escape one or the other, as evidenced by that rather odd little episode during the small hours of the morning.
McCormick had been adamant – pigheaded was a better word – about trying to make conversation with Hardcastle until he could no longer keep his eyes open. But as the kid had had hardly any rest and was in such pain when he was awake, Hardcastle didn't have the heart to rouse him now that he was finally sleeping. Better that McCormick should reserve his strength for whatever came next, than expend it on worrying about things over which he had no control. Hardcastle felt sure that they would not have much longer to wait, although he personally would welcome whatever release presented itself, even if it should be beneath the churning water that was finally making its determined way into their heretofore safe little haven.
In fact, for the last hour or so, Hardcastle had been having a rather meaningful conversation with the Man Upstairs about that very thing – trying to get his spiritual affairs settled once and for all – and he thought things were about as squared away as they would ever be. There was something soothing about the idea that soon he and his wife and his son would be together again; he had always had a few reservations about where he himself would land when all was said and done, but he had never had any doubts about the ultimate destination of the rest of his family. Now he felt fairly confident they would all eventually turn up at more or less the same place – although he did suspect he was in for a good talking to on a couple of subjects first.
But McCormick – well, McCormick had too much living yet to do to give up so easily. Hardcastle and the Big Guy had talked a little about McCormick too, about how he would still need someone to look after him after Hardcastle was gone. Sonny Daye wasn't the only doubtful relationship in McCormick's life; a parade of past and present McCormick girlfriends almost as long as the estate driveway rose up in Hardcastle's mind, and those were just the ones the kid had dated since he had come to Gulls' Way more than three years ago. Hardcastle didn't think it was too much to ask that the kid finally get some stability to his life, with a nice girl to care for him, a couple of kids to worship him, and a law career that just might evolve into a judgeship, if he turned out to be as good a lawyer as Hardcastle suspected he would. Hardcastle even had an idea about the girl he hoped McCormick would eventually marry, but that would be up to McCormick in the end, regardless of whether or not Hardcastle was still in the picture.
Whatever happened, though, Hardcastle was not prepared to let McCormick sacrifice himself in an effort to save his friend, and so he had made his plans accordingly. He thought back to their earlier discussion, and what he had said about forgiveness, and he wondered if McCormick would ever be able to forgive him for what he intended to do. But there was no choice; he was much too ill to make any real effort at escape, and any attempt on McCormick's part to assist him would probably only double the tragedy. Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps they would be able to get away from here with no problems at all, but he could feel the car beginning to toss ever more violently in the rising water, and that alone provided grounds for some rather serious doubts on his part.
Hardcastle stirred restlessly, the cold and damp settling deep into his bones, and he immediately paid the price for that small movement, swallowing deep into his throat an involuntary cry of pain. He desperately wished he could turn over and make sure the kid was really okay, but the abuse his own body had experienced had brought the pain in his abdomen to a constant, flaming torment, as though his insides had ripped apart and were even now crammed, raw and bleeding, just inside his skin. If he stayed very, very still, he could still control the pain to an extent, but it had steadily worsened during the night, so that every movement had become almost unbearable. Somehow he had found the strength to keep his true condition from McCormick's pain-dulled scrutiny, and he could only be thankful that he had managed to keep the kid's suspicions at bay as long as he had. Now that it was daylight, however, it was only a matter of time before he caught on.
To his impotent fury, Hardcastle realized that he was shivering helplessly, caught in the throes of an intermittent ague that had set in with the coming of daybreak. Between the shivering, the pain in his side, the pain in his gut, and the ache in his shoulders, he was miserable indeed, but his fear of waking McCormick made him set his teeth against an almost irrepressible groan. He thought he'd been fairly successful in keeping himself quiet, but when he turned his head toward the kid, he found his eyes meeting McCormick's, strangely calm and watchful. McCormick's voice was equally calm as he asked, "When did it start getting light?"
Hardcastle couldn't trust his voice not to shake in time with his shivering, so he whispered, "About thirty minutes ago." He grinned weakly. "Nice to see you again."
"Yeah, same here. You've looked better, but probably so have I." He stretched his arm across and laid his hand across the judge's forehead, frowning as he noticed the trembling; Hardcastle thought he could see an increasing worry in his face. "Judge, when did this start?"
There was no reason to lie; that point had been passed at daybreak. "About an hour ago," Hardcastle answered through blue lips, his voice shaking despite his best efforts. "God, kiddo, it's so cold."
Concerned, McCormick reached to adjust the overcoat, starting with surprise as his hand came into contact with sodden material. "What the ..."
Sitting up hastily, just by luck missing the edge of the seatback that hung suspended overhead, McCormick bent over Hardcastle and flung aside the coat, paying no heed to Hardcastle's feeble protests. The judge fell silent as McCormick gripped a handful of his shirt, only to find it as saturated as the discarded overcoat, the skin it supposedly protected as chilled as a block of ice. He glanced down to see his own pants soaked halfway up his thighs, shocked at the realization that at some point since he'd fallen asleep, the roof had become awash in river water, its encroachment temporarily arrested by the absorbency of Hardcastle's clothing.
"Oh, my God, Judge, why didn't you tell me?" His grip on the judge's shirt tightened convulsively as he looked up in alarm, noticing for the first time the change in the feel of the car. His eyes, now clearly visible in the strengthening light, met Hardcastle's with a look of despair. "What are we gonna do now?"
And to that, Hardcastle had no reply at all.
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The dreadful thing was, there was nothing McCormick could do now. He released Hardcastle's shirt and collapsed back limply, hugging his knees to his chest and leaning his aching head against the seatback beside him, as he realized just how truly dire their predicament had become. Two men trapped in a wrecked car on a freezing cold February dawn in the middle of some unknown river, with one man desperately ill and dependent on the other man, who was himself suffering from a concussion, if not a full-fledged skull fracture – as a recipe for catastrophe, it could hardly have been more perfectly designed. He was unpleasantly reminded of those first few moments after Weed Randall had died in his arms from a bullet he himself had fired from Hardcastle's gun; even the words running through his mind had an eerie echo of the past. Oh, God, he thought helplessly, what happens now?
Then McCormick gathered himself in, shook himself in anger, and sat up with a determined, if dizzying, jerk. This was ridiculous; he wasn't dead yet, and neither was Hardcastle, and he wasn't going to give up until and unless they were. He knelt again at the judge's side and reached out for one of his icy hands, chafing it gently between both his own. Earlier, with the car interior dry and secure, and with both of them armed with warm coverings, they had been comfortable enough, but now, with Hardcastle already completely soaked to the skin and him almost there as well, the twin specters of hypothermia and pneumonia were beginning to rear their dangerously furtive heads. McCormick thought cynically that it was only one of the ironies of their situation that Hardcastle should feel so cold when his body temperature, if measured by the thermometer, would probably register well over the hundred degree mark by now.
"Judge," he began, as he laid down one well-chafed hand and reached for the other one, "I hate to tell you this, but I think we're about at the make-it-or-break-it part of the plan."
"You mean you have a plan?" asked Hardcastle absently as he watched McCormick's industrious hand-rubbing. "McCormick, what do you think you're doing? It's not like they're gonna stay warm, you know."
"It makes me feel a little better," McCormick answered defiantly, rubbing Hardcastle's hand all the harder for being called on it. "Judge, I can't take the pain away, and I can't take the water away, and I can't take the fever away. But by gum, I can get your hands warm, and mine too in the process." He flicked a strained grin in Hardcastle's direction. "And let me tell you something, we're gonna need my hands nice and warm if we're gonna find a way to get out of here."
"And just how are you planning to do that?" replied Hardcastle with a strangely disinterested curiosity, his gaze still fastened on his own hand trapped between McCormick's constantly moving ones.
McCormick sighed. "I was afraid you might ask me that, and I don't think you're going to like the answer much. The only thing I see to do is go out through the windshield and hope we can hang on to those rocks outside. And if we're gonna have to do that, I'd better be checking out the escape route."
And with those words, McCormick laid the judge's hand by his side and began cautiously crawling over toward the front of the car, wondering a little at the regretful sadness he had seen in those tired blue eyes.
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As Hardcastle waited for McCormick's return, he noticed for the first time how surprisingly well the interior of the car had survived the crash. Everything seemed mostly intact, with the exception of the two sections of McCormick's seat belt; both still swung randomly from their anchors on the front seat, although one was significantly shorter than the other, its latch, along with a portion of its length, still attached securely to its counterpart. Suddenly Hardcastle wondered what he had done with his pocketknife after he'd cut the belt; digging very cautiously in his trousers pocket, he was surprised to find it there. He would have to remember to give it to McCormick later; he just might find a need for it before this was all over.
An exclamation from McCormick drew his attention back to the front of the car, where the kid was on one knee, balancing carefully in the water, right on the edge of the windshield. He turned around and called to Hardcastle, "Judge, we're definitely floating here. If we're gonna go, it's gotta be now." He cast one more anxious glance through the windshield, then began crawling quickly back toward Hardcastle, only to stop in confusion when he realized that the judge was making no effort at all to move. "Judge," he said doubtfully, "what's going on?"
"Well, kiddo, I've been thinking, and I've decided that I'm not going with you," Hardcastle announced in a deceptively agreeable tone. "Without me, you have a really good chance to make it out of here in one piece, but you've got no chance at all with me. So I'm staying here, and you're going without me." And while his smile was almost as agreeable as his voice, the determination in his eyes practically dared McCormick to contradict his decision.
McCormick stared back at him with a distressing lack of comprehension. "What do you mean, you're not going? Look, Hardcase, either we both go, or neither of us goes. And since neither of us is staying, I guess we're both going, and we'd better be going pretty quick, too, 'cause things are starting to get a little dicey around here."
"McCormick," Hardcastle said, and there was something in his voice that caught McCormick's attention, a darkly fatalistic quality that brought him crawling the rest of the way to the judge's side. Hardcastle lay back against the folded jacket, studying the kid's face carefully, his own countenance shadowed by pain and an strange sense of foreboding. "You know, we could go through all this, trying to get me up so I can go out there, and who knows what we'd be doing, climbing rocks or swimming around in a lot of muddy water. It might even be that you'd get hurt worse, or even die trying to save me, and there's no good reason for it, 'cause all we woulda gained is me a little extra time. It's not going to change anything in the long run."
"A little extra time? Judge, what are you talking about?" McCormick sat right back into the water, his brow crinkled in puzzlement, as though he were trying to decipher Hardcastle's words and making no headway at all. Then his face darkened as his eyes narrowed in sudden understanding. "Hardcastle, are you trying to tell me that you think you're dying? Is that what all this malarkey's about?" There was disbelief in his words, along with the first suggestion of an ominous flatness to his voice.
"Kiddo," Hardcastle said gently, "I've seen people before who've been sick like I'm sick. Just like me, they got to hurting really bad, and then they went to the hospital and had the tests, and three weeks later they were gone."
"Oh, you're a doctor now?" asked McCormick sarcastically. "Because if you're not, then I got news for you, Hardcase, it's a doctor's job to tell you that you've got three weeks to live, not yours. What is this, Judge? You get sick once in twenty years, and it has to be something you don't recover from? Didn't you listen to yourself a while ago? You listed a whole medical dictionary of stuff it could be, and most of 'em aren't fatal, they just make you, well, really sick."
"As sick as this? McCormick, it's been getting worse and worse, and now it's gotten to the point where it hurts so bad, I don't care when I die, as long as it's soon. But I do care where I die, and how. And who I take with me." Hardcastle turned his head away, and with a hopelessness that was completely foreign to the Milton C. Hardcastle that McCormick knew so well, he muttered, "McCormick, I don't wanna die with a bunch of tubes running into my body all over the place, and some hose hanging out from one side of my mouth, and some stupid machine going beep, beep, beep, driving everyone crazy, and me just lying there, waiting for the beeps to get slower and slower and slower, and then finally they stop and I'm dead. I don't think it's gonna happen, McCormick, I know it is, and I'd rather go right here, right now, with my mind clear and my boots on, than to wind up like that." He rolled his head back to stare at the floorboard overhead, continuing with a sigh, "And God knows the last thing I want is for you to go before your time, just because of my stupidity."
Then Hardcastle closed his eyes, not so much from exhaustion, but because he could not bear to see the intense blue stare that willed him to say something, do something, to show that his spirit had not been completely broken, that he would continue to fight this thing through to the bitter end. But the images of his wife and his son came into his mind, and the pain continued to build in his gut, and he was so incredibly tired. He just didn't have the will to fight anymore – not even for McCormick's sake.
Still, even though he had half expected it, Hardcastle wasn't quite prepared for the hardness in McCormick's voice as he said evenly, "Are you finished?"
Hardcastle turned to look at him, at his face set like granite and the coldness in his eyes, and wondered uneasily what he was thinking. "Yeah, I'm finished."
"Good. Because if you ask me, stupid doesn't even begin to cover it, and I'm not just talking about the way we managed to get stuck here in this river. If you want to quit and give it all up, that's up to you. But you're not gonna do it on my time."
Then, grimly foregoing the pleading-and-arguing preliminaries, McCormick cut straight to the chase. With no hesitation and no apparent compunction, he grabbed Hardcastle under the arms and unceremoniously hauled him across the waterlogged roof, to the accompaniment of a few strangled ejaculations and a surprised, anguished yelp of pain from his reluctant burden. Upon their precipitate arrival next to the broken windshield, McCormick shoved him into a sitting position against the passenger side door. He then crouched across from Hardcastle next to the steering wheel, the harshness of their combined breathing the only sounds to be heard above the rushing of the river over their no-longer-secure anchorage.
For his part, Hardcastle was hurting, and embarrassed, and furious despite his embarrassment, and he had every intention of venting that fury in no uncertain terms. But at the sight of the assumed indifference on McCormick's face, the unreadable expression in his eyes as he stared out through the broken windshield, Hardcastle swallowed his words with a difficulty stemming from the sudden dryness of his mouth, rather than his suddenly dissipated anger. He now realized, in appalled belatedness, the reasoning that lay behind McCormick's unexpectedly hostile response, a reasoning so predictable, yet so completely opposite to Hardcastle's original intentions, that he could have shot himself for being so blind. As McCormick said, stupid didn't even begin to cover it, and there was nothing Hardcastle could say now to alter the kid's obvious misconception and its inevitable fallout.
For a few un-Hardcastle-like moments, he wished he had never heard of San Francisco, or George Mangell, or Mark McCormick, or Malibu – or, for good measure, southern California, with all the painful conflicts and entanglements and misunderstandings and mistakes he had encountered and engendered during his nearly forty-five years of living there. But he abruptly shut down that line of thinking; those were a coward's thoughts, and he had never been a coward, no matter what McCormick might think of him now. He had brought this on himself; the least he could do was face the consequences with dignity, even though it was a dignity that was quickly unraveling at the edges.
Hardcastle blinked, realizing that McCormick was no longer looking out the windshield, but was now staring directly at him. There was no doubt now about the anger in those blue eyes, an icy rage that caused an equivalent coldness within the judge's heart, and he had the strangest sensation that, despite his fever, his entire body was in fact cooling from the inside out, like he was dead already, even though he could still see, and hear, and even feel. Perhaps that was due to this curious sense of loss, this idea that everything was over and done with, regardless of whether he actually lived or died.
Deep down, he could already feel the beginnings of grief over a friendship he had deliberately severed to no good purpose, although it had not seemed that way when he had made his plans during those endless predawn hours. But there was nothing he could do about it now, and so he sat propped limply against the upended door, desolate and depleted and sick at heart, although his impassive face showed none of those things. As he wondered just how his calculations could have gone so terribly awry, he tried with an effort to concentrate on McCormick's words.
For McCormick was speaking now, in a hard, steady voice that nevertheless seemed to hum with tension. "I don't know where you got the idea that your mind is clear, Hardcastle, because it's pretty obvious to me that somewhere along the line, it's gotten a little on the foggy side. But what's clear in my mind is that you are not going to do this to me. We are leaving here together, and you'll just have to lay your boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck impression on some other flunky some other time. If you can't walk, I'll carry you, and don't you think I can't. As for what happens after we get out of this mess, we'll just have to wait and see. But get this, Hardcastle, you are not dying until it's actually your time to die, do you hear me? If shuffling off this mortal coil is really something you're looking forward to, well, I can't stop you from wanting to die, but I can sure as hell keep you from expediting the process, at least as far as your staying here and drowning in this car."
McCormick leaned forward, his eyes practically drilling holes into Hardcastle's. "You wanted a promise from me earlier, now you're gonna return the favor. You are going to promise me that you won't give up, that you won't just go out there and lay down and die once we're out of here. You owe me that, Hardcastle, for the hell I've been through since I got back from Daytona, and I am not taking no for an answer. Got that?"
Hardcastle nodded.
"You promise?"
Hardcastle nodded again.
"Say it!"
"I promise."
"Do you mean it?"
"Dammit, I said it, didn't I?" Hardcastle burst out resentfully. "I said it, I meant it."
McCormick sat back on his heels, with his hands tightly clasped in his lap, his gaze bitter on Hardcastle's face. "I shoulda known you'd try to pull a stunt like this. But if you think I could leave you behind here in this car to die, like some kind of hero falling on his sword, well, you got another think coming."
All of a sudden, the car jerked sideways beneath them, so that McCormick had to grab the dash to keep from pitching forward into the water. There was a horrible scraping noise, and then the car began to pitch and roll, nearly free of its rock-pile moorings. The water was coming in much faster now, so that he had to hang on to the steering wheel over his shoulder before he could bend down to look through the windshield. What could be seen there was alarming to say the least; the rocks that only seconds before had held the Edsel securely in place were now beginning to move away at a frightening speed. McCormick closed his eyes for a second, then he turned grimly back to Hardcastle. "Well, Hardcastle, you might get your way after all. We're gonna have to swim for it."
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Even as the water poured in through the broken windshield, causing the car to cant slightly to one side, McCormick was back on his knees by Hardcastle, ruthlessly stripping off his shirt and impatiently slapping away his ineffectual attempts to help; then, leaving the judge shivering in his t-shirt, he reached down beneath the water and hastily pulled off both his and Hardcastle's shoes. Straightening, he pulled his own jacket and shirt over his head in one fluid movement, absently noting the loss of a button from his shirt cuff as he debated whether or not his own undershirt should go.
As McCormick's t-shirt rolled up from his waist, he was shocked to see a vivid blue-green bruising across his lower chest, disappearing past his waistband toward his upper abdomen, and for the first time, he noticed a dull ache in that area. Suddenly he remembered Hardcastle's vague description of his rescue from the confines of the seatbelt, how he had been hanging there like 'a side of beef', and he cast a speculative glance at the driver's side seat belt and its raggedly hacked edges, followed by an even more appraising glance toward Hardcastle, who was abstractedly staring across the car and out the driver's side window.
But everything, the t-shirt question, the missing button, the bruises, all were forgotten with the realization that the car was sinking ever more quickly into what was revealed to be a very considerable river, much wider and deeper than it had appeared from the now-nonexistent bridge. He cast a frantic glance around the car interior, looking for something floatable that they could hang onto until they could get to the riverbank, but nothing presented itself as a likely prospect. He spotted the radar detector tossed against the driver's side of the upturned interior, its cord lying tangled by its side, and automatically he reached up to touch his forehead, surprised to discover that he had completely forgotten about his headache.
Suddenly he had an idea. Picking up the radar detector, he stared at it vindictively before yanking off its long cord with one vicious jerk. Then he brought the cord to Hardcastle, tying one end securely to the judge's belt and stuffing the other end deep into the judge's nearest pants pocket, remarking as he did so, "You can give that end back to me once we're outside the car."
Hardcastle watched his proceedings in bewilderment. "Just what are you planning to do, McCormick? Tow me?"
"No," McCormick replied shortly, "I just want to try to make sure I don't lose you once we get out there." Taking his jacket and wrapping it around one hand, he started beating at the broken glass that still rimmed that area of the windshield; when he was satisfied that it was as safe as he could make it, he turned to Hardcastle, his calmness masking the tightness in his throat, and announced, "Time to go. Just make sure you head straight to the left once you clear the windshield, okay? And look, grab onto whatever part of the car you can get hold of and use that to get up to the surface, and then hang on tight until I catch up and get hold of that cord, 'cause I don't know what's gonna happen once we get out in that current. Go on, I'll be right behind you."
Hardcastle nodded silently and leaned down toward the windshield, moving with an excruciating slowness. McCormick watched him, truly seeing him for the first time since they had left San Francisco – the deeply embedded lines of pain creasing the sallow skin of his face; the dark bruises that were dotted here and there across the visible parts of his body; his sternly set jaw; the blank, almost vacant expression in his eyes; the hesitant, agonizingly sluggish movements – and it came to McCormick that this man really was sickening unto death, that his ability to move now was only due to his grim determination to stick to his promise and not let McCormick down again. He looked so old and frail, so terribly vulnerable ... and before he even realized what he was doing, McCormick had stopped him, holding him by the wrist with a grip so tight that the bones grated against one another in protest against the unexpected constriction.
Hardcastle turned to look back at him, brows knit, as he answered impatiently, "What?"
McCormick closed his eyes for a second, forcing himself to ignore the knot of fear that had suddenly lodged in the middle of his chest. But he could not keep the anxiety out of his voice as he stammered, "I don't ... I can't ... look, Judge, for God's sake, be careful, alright? Wait for me, and please don't do anything stupid. Please?" There was a world of meaning hidden in those halting words, much more than could be expressed in the few remaining seconds allotted to them, and McCormick could not seem to release the fingers that remained locked around Hardcastle's wrist.
Hardcastle studied McCormick for a brief moment, before replying with a faint return of his normal cockiness, "Hey, I made you a promise, didn't I?" He pulled his wrist free of McCormick's grasp and gave his arm a gentle pat. "We'll talk about it later, okay? C'mon, kiddo, we gotta go. See ya on the riverbank." The next second, he was through the windshield, and into the murky water beyond.
Left alone with the car, McCormick took a quick glance around the Edsel, at her beautiful upholstery, her silk lining that was now all but obscured by the rising water, the polished chrome buttons on her steering wheel that said this car was one like no other. Then he rubbed the leather-trimmed dashboard affectionately, startled to feel a slight stinging in his eyes. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said in a voice soft with regret. "You deserve a lot better ending than this."
Then he too was gone, leaving the Edsel alone but not forlorn, facing whatever came next with all the chutzpah with which her life had begun. And as she finally broke free of the last rocks and careened wildly into the fast-moving current of the river, her unspoken farewell, directed to those who were the very last to ever bear her company, seemed to echo around the rocks and chasms that surrounded her soon-to-be final resting place.
Godspeed.
