Signals from a Lampless Beacon

Then they saw the rest of the party, huddled in groups, mostly around a seated figure, who proved to be Mary, seeming to have collapsed onto the sand, legs drawn up beside her, with difficulty holding herself in a sitting position against an extended left arm, the right hand over her eyes. Her ankles were crossed, and quite distracting even under the commanding circumstances. She was trembling, more violently than the cold could have accounted for. Three men stood at the water’s edge, the surf sliding up about their ankles, sliding back again into the empty sea, which they scanned helplessly, shading their eyes, as though this might enable them to see farther. Edward broke into a run, fell kneeling beside his wife. “What? What?” “Bobby has gone into the water.” Was nobody with him? Nobody watching him? Juliana, kneeling already beside the stricken mother, sensing these demands, began to explain: “We were all watching them all. It was as if he had…vanished. Lock was holding his hand. Then, apparently, Bobby stopped, said he was going to ‘ride in the ocean,’ let go Lock’s hand. Then…he seems just to have…just not have stayed. Lock went into the water after him—seconds after him; it couldn’t have been longer. He didn’t see him again.” But she found herself speaking only to thin air. Edward, as soon as Mary had answered him, had lunged upward and toward the low waves, which at that place, too, were breaking feebly and opaque, concealing a surprisingly strong undertow, for the ebb had got established. Edward burst into the sea at a run, until depth around his legs slowed him to wading. When chest-deep and grown impatient of the countercurrent, he attempted to swim, all seemingly without set direction. Yet he believed he was working the sea-field as hounds work on land. For he must. It was the first time in his life he had been compelled to do what was impossible, knowing it was impossible, but without option to desist. The men at the water’s edge straggled in behind him. Now Edward, with his cumbrous clothing fully saturated, sank below the surface, but instantly reappeared, sank again. The other men, rushing to save him, found themselves incapable either of making headway or of evading. A large-scale disaster seemed in the offing. Not suddenly, but suddenly as it seemed, the waters beyond were being plowed by a couple of not very large boats, each with a very large outboard motor. Those on shore looked up when they heard a recognizable, evenly broken clatter. A helicopter appeared overhead and began a series of low-altitude passes along the waves, and then seaward of them. An ambulance rolled up—no siren, no klaxon, no flash of lights. The child had entered the water long before now. The Rescue Squad had launched three inflatable red scows. The Police chief had arrived, his car, by contrast to the ambulance, flashing all the vain lights with which it was equipped. A newspaper reporter appeared. He approached that man who, having Josh’s build, had burst into the wedding brunch those so many years before, outdone. He was outdone now and slugged the reporter, who fell senseless onto the sand. The four whelmed men were got to safety, Edward and one of the others were scarcely conscious, but alive, and soon brought round by the paramedical team from the truck. A Coastguard vessel, with broad red stripe raked from the bow, was spotted in the distance, approaching the other craft. None had observed Alenda and Josh going right past the scene of catastrophe, walking with rapid stride. Alenda had given Josh her order and assessment: “There is nothing for either of us to do here. Come along. We must hurry, although I am more concerned for the parents than for the child.” Could her last drink have contained some contaminant? But Josh obeyed, and Alenda said nothing more, until ahead they could see a small cut or gully. “There it is, I believe.” Back where the loss had occurred, the crowd upon the hard sand began to mill about, each trying to think of something to do, or of some excuse for departure. None wished to abandon, no more to seem superfluous. Those who possessed them left to fetch their Jeeps and vehicles equipped with off-road drive. The paramedical personnel set about wrapping in blankets the men reaped from the sickly brine. They loaded the one farthest gone into the ambulance, and one of them drove it away. Edward fought off all attention offered himself and went to Mary. He and Julie took her by the shoulders and got her to her feet, as she refused to be carried. She made no spasmodic gesture. In any case, there was no bud-vase to strike to the ground, no carpet to hold its spilt water in beads of sparkling life, then suddenly absorb them away from sight. Only the ever-thirsting sand, which held barrels of water without its showing. But Mary, like the Mother of her own Son’s namesake, fell into lassitude of body and limb. And Edward prayed, as his Grandfather had done two generations before: Let her consciousness go with her strength; let her, even for a short while, not be compelled to know this. The Coastguard cutter stood in close to shore; the two motorboats took to trolling. The helicopter kept on chopping, chopping the sorrowing air, each stroke, and harmonic of spilling wave, driving Mary’s heart deeper toward despair.