Us and Uncle Fraud (10 page)

"Louise!" he yelled angrily. "What the
hell
are you doing? And where's Marcus? Mother sent me out to find you. They closed all the schools almost an hour ago!"

I tried to sound casual, though I had a sharp pain in my side from running and was still gripped with a feeling of fear for Marcus. But I shrugged with pretended nonchalance, my shoulders lifting inside my slicker.

"I went to the library. And stupid Marcus went down to the cemetery to see if any bones were floating out. I'm just going to meet him, and then we'll be right home. Tell Mother we'll be there in a few minutes, okay?"

He didn't answer, but he looked furious, and I didn't blame him. I would have been furious, too. In fact, suddenly I was terribly angry at Marcus. If it weren't for him, I would have been home drinking hot chocolate at this very minute, instead of being dripping wet and freezing cold.

Tom sprayed me with more cold water from the wheels of his bike when he rode off toward home without looking back. I realized that it was the first time I had ever heard him swear. Maybe, I thought with satisfaction, I would tell on him when I got home, and he would be in trouble along with Marcus and me.

Where
was
Marcus? I was nearing the cemetery now, after struggling along for the remaining blocks, and there was still no sign of him. I hated the cemetery. Mother had tried to point out to me how pretty it was, planted with flowers and bushes everywhere; some people even had picnics there in summer. But to me it was just a place where dead people were. Our old neighbor, Mrs. Bostwick, was in there somewhere, and so was Mrs. Mallory's husband, the one who had died of the mysterious fever long ago. Kenny Stratton's mother was there in the cemetery, too. The place gave me the creeps, and I always crossed the street to the other side when I had to walk past its low stone wall.

Now I had to enter it, and I would never
ever
forgive Marcus for that. The flowers and bushes, like Mother's forsythia, were battered and smashed by the rain. The gravestones, still standing in the blanket of water, tilted crazily. Here and there, higher places were still exposed, but it seemed eerie, seeing those rounded hills like the naked shoulders of a floating corpse.

"Marcus!" I yelled, standing ankle-deep in the path. But there was no answer, and I knew that if he was—as I expected—still down at the river's edge, he couldn't possibly hear me.

I sloshed on, and the noise of the water under my feet and slicing down through the trees from the sky was now intensified by the rushing sound of the river. Ordinarily this was such a quiet place. But
today, as I approached the oldest section of the cemetery, the area that bordered the river, it roared with the sound of water. My voice—though I continued calling Marcus's name—was lost, washed away by the violent raging turmoil I could hear ahead.

Now, suddenly, I could see what once had been the wall that divided the river from the land. Crumbling, Father had said. But it hadn't crumbled ; it had heaved and smashed; it had been blasted by the fury of the flood, and I could see the huge rocks of the wall being lifted by the water's brown, surging force, pounded against each other and tossed like pebbles in the foaming waves. Behind the demolished wall, in the cemetery itself, the water was moving and the gravestones, too, were being uprooted and tumbled about like toys.

And now, at last, I could see Marcus. His brilliant yellow slicker stood out against the brown and gray muddled, writhing mixture of land and water.

"Damn you, Marcus!" I shouted, overwhelmed by anger as Tom had been. "Damn you, damn you!" I had fought my way through this storm to find him, and now I would face Mother's wrath, and Tom's and Father's, and here he was; he had forgotten his promise to meet me, and he was standing there like a ghoulish idiot, looking for bones.

He hadn't seen me yet, and no wonder: The river was surging immediately in front of him, waves breaking and crashing over the rocks at the base of
the demolished wall; the water was swirling right over his feet and up to his knees. The idiot! Why didn't he move back! But he wasn't even looking at the angry water. He was looking up and to the side, and I followed the direction of his eyes and saw that a large tree had been torn practically in half by the wind. A massive limb was twisting—I could hear the tortured sound of it—and was about to fall.

"Marcus! You idiot! Get out of the way!" I screamed, more terrified now than angry; and I ran forward, scraping my knee on the edge of a toppled gravestone.

He heard my voice at last and turned his face toward me. Now I could see his desperate expression. He was sobbing.

"Louise! Help me!" he cried. I ran forward, dodging the debris that shot past me in the rushing water, which was now up to my knees. Above us, the tree limb groaned and shook.

"Run, Marcus! Come on!"

But he continued to stand there, immobile, sobbing. I was no more than three feet from him now, and it was difficult to stay upright in the rushing water.

"My foot is caught!" He grabbed my extended hand, but he couldn't move. I reached with my other hand through the cold swirling water and felt the rock; but it was a boulder, one of the huge stones from the wall. The river immediately beyond
us was tossing them around as if they were weightless; but I couldn't move this one a single inch to free my brother.

We put our arms around each other, holding ourselves up together, and the water slapped now around my waist.

I heard the crack as the tree limb broke and began to fall. I closed my eyes and clutched Marcus. Then I felt myself lifted by water, turned and raked by branches, strangled by mud and twigs. The water churned over me until I thought I could hold my breath no longer; then my face scraped against rough rock, I was flung to the ground, the water receded, and I opened my eyes.

I was stunned, and dazed. But I was alive, and I was on the ground, lying in a few inches of water. I coughed, pushed myself painfully to a sitting position, and looked frantically for Marcus.

He was there, still, his slicker still a bright identifying mark, but we were far apart now. The falling tree had separated us and had freed him from the boulder, but the wave that had caused the tree to fall had also carried him out into the river. Now he was clinging to the tangle of branches that had once been the top of the ancient elm, and around him the river was at work, tearing off the leaves and bark.

The heavier end of the tree was still on the ground near me, partially submerged, but the force of the water was lifting it rhythmically and sucking away
the earth beneath. I threw myself on it to hold it still, but the weight of my body was no match for the surge of water, and it continued to lift and pound as if I weren't there.

"Climb in on the tree, Marcus!" I shouted, but the words were barely said when I felt the entire heavy trunk lift under me, flinging me aside. Dislodged from the ground, it moved on the water. Some of its branches now ripped loose and shot away, disappearing almost instantly in the river.

I watched Marcus shift and move in the end of the broken tree. He inched closer toward the land, but he was still far away, and the massive trunk was floating now, beginning to move outward. I grabbed it, uselessly trying to hold it there with all my strength; but my strength was human, and the force of the flooding river was beyond anything human. The tree moved away from me as I watched helplessly, and my brother scrambled precariously in its tearing branches.

"Move back where it's safe, Louise!" I heard suddenly from behind me. "I'll get him!"

It was Tom. In a daze I turned and saw him throwing off his coat; his bike was on its side in the water where the cemetery path had been. He pushed past me roughly, waded between the boulders, and entered the river, guiding himself by holding the tree. He was moving in the same direction as the raging current, and it swept him quickly out toward Marcus. I watched as he grasped Marcus by the
neck of his yellow slicker, pulled him into the water, and then, still holding the tree, started back, pulling Marcus behind him.

But the tree had been moving slowly all the time. Now there was an expanse of surging water between the land and the ugly, ripped trunk. And the current was against Tom now. I could see him fighting it, moving inch by inch, holding Marcus tightly. The tree bobbed, and moved out another foot. My brothers were moving in—but not fast enough. They advanced a few inches; the tree shifted and moved out farther.

Behind them, suddenly, I saw another huge, swirling wave approaching. I screamed, pointing, and Tom turned, saw the wall of brown water, and hugged Marcus to him. It was moving toward the land, the way the last one, the one that had caught Marcus and me, had; I watched as it captured my brothers, wrenched them loose from the drifting tree, and propelled them forward. It broke in front of me, bubbled around my feet, and deposited Marcus nearby. He raised himself to his hands and knees and vomited. I sobbed in relief.

But when I looked around through my tears and the rain that still was coming down, I saw that Tom was not there. Only Marcus had been swept ashore. I searched the landscape for my older brother, and finally I found him. He had been sucked back by the reversal of the wave, and now he was out there, clinging to what remained of the tree. As Marcus and I watched in horror, the explosive current in
the river caught the tree and Tom, turned them in a sweeping circle, and sent them swiftly out to the center of the widening, treacherous river; then, bobbing wildly, they disappeared around the bend to the south.

I turned and looked once more at Marcus, who was still on his knees in the shallow water, choking and retching. He was battered, bruised, and scared; but he was alive. And I was sure that Tom was not.

I turned and ran, leaving Marcus there. It seemed as if I had been running through this rain all day. This time, as I ran splashing and sobbing through the cemetery, my feet were bare; somehow my boots and shoes had been wrested from my feet by the river. And my slicker was in shreds, the hat gone. I pushed my wet hair out of my eyes, wincing when I touched my face. I pulled my hand away; it was covered with blood.

I tried, as I ran, to remember which way to turn as I left the cemetery gate: Which way would be closest to a house where I could use the telephone and call for help?

But close to the cemetery entrance, I saw a man kneeling on one of the small rises that was still free of the flood. I didn't care who he was, or that he seemed to be praying for a lost relative or friend. He was a man—an adult—and I was a child with one brother still in a battered heap by the devastated wall and the other lost in that ghastly, grabbing water. I ran, gasping, up the small hill to beg him to help me.

He stood and backed off when he saw me. "Go away!" he said harshly.

I realized how frightening I must seem, covered with mud and bleeding from the gash in my forehead, appearing out of nowhere in that godforsaken place inundated now with turbulent water and broken tombstones. But I recognized the man. It was Kenny Stratton's father.

"It's me, Mr. Stratton," I cried, desperate. "It's Louise Cunningham—I'm Kenny's friend. Help me! My brother got sucked into the river!"

He stared at me with panic in his eyes. "Where?" he asked.

"Down there!" I pointed. "He's caught on a tree, and it headed down that way, toward the bridge!"

"I'll call the police," he said. "Come with me!"

He dropped a small object he was holding, and turned and ran toward the cemetery gate. Without thinking, I picked up the small, mud-coated thing and thrust it into the pocket of my slicker. His legs were much longer than mine; I followed him at a
distance, then saw him bang on the door of a house and go inside.

Panting, I reached the house and climbed the front steps just as he came back out. "The police already know," he said. "Someone spotted him from the bridge when he got caught on one of the supports. They're trying to get him out now."

People came from inside the house and clustered around me. Someone wiped at my bloody face with a towel, but I pushed her away.

"I have my car right here," Mr. Stratton told me. "I'll take you down to the bridge where he is."

"Is Tom dead?" I asked.

No one answered for a moment. "They don't know," Mr. Stratton said, finally, and put his arm around me.

"You go on," I said. "I have to go back. My other brother's still down there."

"Another brother?" asked the woman who had been trying to wipe my face. "Is he all right?"

"He's puking," I said flatly, "and I want to take him home."

They let me go. I looked back, as I reentered the cemetery, and saw that they had all gone with Mr. Stratton to the old car that was parked in the rain-filled street.

This time I half-walked, half-ran, into the cemetery, following the same flooded path through the same eerie, desolate landscape. When I was partway to the river, I saw Marcus in his bright yellow slicker, or what remained of it, coming slowly
toward me. He was limping. Like me, he was barefoot and bleeding and coated with mud; like me, he was crying.

"Tom's caught in the bridge supports and they're trying to get him out," I said when I reached him.

Marcus didn't answer. He stared at me with stunned eyes. His nose was bleeding, and the blood turned pink as it was diluted on his face by rain and tears. The pale pink drops fell from his chin.

"Come on, Marcus. We have to go home and tell Mother."

He still said nothing. He stared at me and wept silently. I was frightened by his silence; I wished he would scream or hit me. Instead, he simply stood there, dazed.

Finally he looked down at his own hand, clenched to a fist around a piece of bent and twisted metal. He raised his hand, opened his fist, and handed the odd-shaped thing to me. It was what was left of Tom's glasses.

Then he spoke. "His bike is there," he said.

"I know. Father will get it. Come."

But still he didn't move.

Finally I shook him. "Marcus!" I said. "Marcus the Newbold! Let's go
home.
"