Her effort at gangster slang brought a brief smile to both male faces. Cliff's eyes searched Dusty's serious young face. "Is that the sort of thing that's bothering you, boy?"
Dusty shuffled his feet and cleared his throat again. "Looks like I got to tell somebody, only— they're my gang, Mr. Warrender. They expect me to look after them, you see?"
"And they're up to something they ought not be doing?" Cliff pressed him.
The boy nodded, his wild black hair flopping over his forehead, then back again. "But they ain't to blame, Mr. Warrender. Honest, they ain't."
"You see, things aren't usually black or white, but somewhere in between," Donna interpreted. "This is like that."
"Like your taking the car, Dusty?" Cliff probed.
"Nossir," Dusty decided after thought. "That was me doin' wrong, even if I never planned it that way. This—Mr Warrender, grown folks ought to leave kids alone."
"Yes. Often they should," Cliff agreed. "Who is it, Dusty? Who's bothering your gang?"
"That Mr. Eustace, Mr. Warrender. You see, I wasn't in there with them much last night an' — That Eustace—"
He didn't go on. Cliff's eyes were anxious on his worried face. "Eustace what, Dusty?"
"It's them cigarettes. Marijuana. Come from Cuba, don't they?" he said with difficulty. "But they're just kids, Mr. Warrender. It's fun to try things if you don't know too much about it, an' I wasn't there to punch Eustace in the nose." He seemed to be apologizing for his absence.
"Eustace gave them marijuana cigarettes?" Cliff repeated through gritted teeth.
Again Dusty nodded. "You remember my pop, Mr. Warrender. He taken stuff. Whatever he could get. He was a drunk, too. An' he's dead from it. I wouldn'ta let my boys smoke them cigarettes if I'da been there, an' they— It was just somethin' they never tried. You know how it is when a thing sounds like—" He was at a loss for a word.
"Fun? Adventure?" Cliff offered.
"Yes sir. A grown man hadn't ought to give kids stuff like that. 'Specially when he knows what it's like. Mr. Eustace, he—"
Donna had not dreamed that Cliff could look so grim. His lips were thin, his jaw sharp. "Let's see your boys, Dusty. Now." He strode down the hall toward the room to which the boys were assigned.
Dusty trotted at his heels. "I never meant you to take it out on my boys, Mr. Warrender. It ain't their fault; not rightly speaking, it ain't."
Donna, running at Dusty's heels, put her hand on the boy's arm. "You leave it to Mr. Warrender, Dusty. He'll fix it up right."
Cliff turned his head and gave her a brilliant smile without slowing his progress. His face was stern again as he turned into the boys' room.
The shades had been pulled down and the room was dark. The boys slept. The resiny odor of marijuana filled the room. Beneath that was the sour smell of unwashed bodies. Cliff, still taking long, angry strides, crossed the room and flung up the shades. The boys' faces were pale behind their young beards. There were blue shadows under their closed eyes. Their lips were gray and dry.
"Where's Eustace?" Cliff asked, and he made a nasty thing of the name.
"Down other end of the hall, I reckon," Dusty answered. His eyes were big and he watched Cliff as if he were seeing a stranger.
Cliff had not really waited for the answer. He was out of the room before either of his companions realized his intention. Then their eyes met and they went after him, almost running to catch up.
Even so, he reached Eustace's room before them. Like the boys in the first room, Frank Eustace was asleep. Like that room, this had a sweaty, sour smell, but the resinous odor of the cigarettes was not here. Donna watched, fascinated, horrified, as Cliff jerked the older man up by his tie and shook him as a playful dog might a rag. Eustace's eyes opened, then closed as if their own weight made keeping them open beyond him. His head bobbed about like a cork in rough water.
"Eustace," Cliff shouted at him. "Eustace, pull yourself together! You've gone too far this time. Boys! Hell itself is too good for you."
Eustace opened his eyes again. Donna felt the whole scene was something out of a television play, the two unshaven men, Cliff's face contorted, Eustace's stupid, almost unconscious. Then Eustace managed to draw himself up. Little by little, he became the man she had seen in the hall the afternoon before, superior, contemptuous.
"Mr. Warrender, I believe. Welcome to my temporary abode, Counselor."
Cliff shook him again. "Boys!" he shouted at the other man. "You don't have to foist your bad habits off on children, Eustace. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to break your neck." He sounded as if he meant every syllable of it.
Dusty was convinced. "Don't do that, Mr. Warrender. I'll straighten my gang out. He ain't worth killin', Mr. Warrender."
Donna's hand went over her trembling mouth and she moaned, "Oh, Cliff, no."
Eustace, too, was convinced. "I—I couldn't help myself, Mr. Warrender. You don't know how it is when you've got to have a fix. You don't know how it is. You'll do anything. Anything."
"But you had that hundred dollars. You got your stuff. Why did you give the boys cigarettes? Why?" He jerked the man so fiercely that he choked.
Then Eustace gasped out, "He took it from me, that money. He's got it. Gave me only one needle and laughed when I asked for more. Laughed! Laughed at Frank Eustace, the scum!"
"Who?" Cliff demanded. "Who?"
Not quite all the fight had gone out of Eustace. "You know I'm not going to tell you that, Counselor. I'd never get another one."
Cliff's hands fastened about the thin neck. Once more, he jerked the small head. "Who, Eustace?"
Donna took a deep, ragged breath. Cliff had no patience with serious crime, with criminals whom he couldn't help.
The addict had gone limp. His lips moved, but no sound came.
"Poague?" Cliff questioned. "Monte Poague?"
The sound was hardly a whisper. "Monte Poague." Eustace's face was very white. He seemed to be having difficulty breathing. "I'm ashamed, Mr. Warrender. Really ashamed. You know that paper you've been wanting me to sign? I'll sign it now. Not boys, Counselor. I don't want boys in my predicament."
Cliff dropped him back on his pallet. For a minute or two, he lay there sobbing. Then the sobs turned to heavy breathing and then silence. Donna listened. The silence was deafening. There was no screaming wind beyond the rainswept windows.
Her lips trembled so that she could hardly speak.
"The storm. I-it's over. Isn't it?"
The storm was over.
It still rained. There was wind, but quiet, harmless wind.
But the three days at the school were not over no matter how tired or sleepless those in charge might be.
Dusty was the first to leave the building. "Like the dove Noah sent out," Donna told Cliff as they watched from the front doors of the schoolhouse. He had two errands to run. The police came first and took Monte Poague and Frank Eustace away. Then the funeral directors the Wards had chosen came for them, backing the ambulance up close to the building so that no rain fell on their bodies.
Donna wept a little once more against Cliff's broad shoulder. It was a very fine place to be, she decided, in Cliff's arms, her nose against the tweed and tobacco smell of his coat. That thought dried her tears. And just then, Hank, his head white-turbaned, came down the stairs. He didn't seem half so disconcerted by what he now saw as he had been by her dancing. Maybe there was some hope for his turning out to be human after all, she thought, drawing away and wiping her cheeks on the back of her hand.
"We've got our work cut out for us," the principal began. "We've got to check out every single soul who came into the building. A lot of them are going to want to go at once."
"They can't take these sick children out in weather like this," Donna protested. "Not with measles. Oh, I hope we aren't going to have to be here another night."
"That will depend on how much damage has been done to their houses," Cliff told her. "We can back cars up the way they did the ambulance and get the kids home dry enough. The men will probably go out first, to see what their places are like."
But it was Miss Baby LaRue who appeared at the door of the office of the principal just then. She carried her parrot cage with its mangy and grumbling bird boldly now. Her round face was as highly colored, her hair as brassy, as when she had arrived. Her dimples were out and her voice was richly affectionate.
"Been as much fun as a county fair, hasn't it?" she chirped. "Time I went home, I s'pose. You kids take care of yourselves."
"But, Baby, suppose your house has the roof blown off? You'd better wait until somebody checks it for you," Cliff protested.
She laughed until her rounded belly danced. "Let me tell you something, boy. That house's stood a heap of hurricanes, and it ain't about to give up the ghost now. Firm, she is. I don't come here because I'm scared of what the hurricane will do. I come because I like all the excitement. You never know what's going to happen at a hurricane shelter. 'Course I never saw much of it this year, havin' a baby an' all, but somebody came in there and told me. Looks like to me, we had a little more'n usual. But that's to make up for not havin' one last year. See you next hurricane."
She got as far as the door, turned, cocked her head to one side and fixed her bright eyes on Hank. "Mr. Fincher, you gonna quit flittin' from girl to girl an' settle down with that Miss Mary Hendley? You'll not do better, an' it looks better if a teacher's married, a man teacher, I mean. Dealin' with all them women all the time, it looks better."
Hank's face looked redder under his white bandage than it really was. "Yes, Miss LaRue. When school's out next summer, we think we'll get married and go to summer school together."
Donna groaned inwardly. Summer school! If that was Hank's idea of a honeymoon, he hadn't improved after all.
Baby evidently agreed with her. "Shoo!" she said disgustedly. "What're you waitin' for? To get old enough? Christmas is comin' up. You got ten days then, an' you can go to Nassau for thirty-six dollars apiece. You get married Christmas. Goodbye, all." The little woman trotted out into the rain.
They all laughed at her, a gentle amusement, appreciative of the earthy goodness of the former stripper.
"I'm glad Mary wasn't here for that little exchange," Hank said, looking ill at ease. "She'd have been embarrassed."
Donna looked at him in wonderment. "Not Mary. She's been wearing her heart on her sleeve for ages, not caring much that everybody knew she was carrying a torch for you. And Baby's right, Hank. You marry her Christmas. Time's awastin'."
"A lady sets the date," Hank reminded her a bit stiffly.
"When her suitor is importunate," Donna insisted. "You be importunate about Christmas."
Cliff took pity on the embarrassed principal.
"Everybody thinks he has the right to run a teacher's life, Fincher. Don't let 'em run over you."
Hank had recovered his aplomb. "You know, I believe they have something. I believe I'll go look up Mary right now."
The men were beginning to leave the building to make an exploration of conditions. Donna and Cliff, from the roofed entrance of the school, looked over the grounds. Most of the planting of which the school had been so proud had been uprooted. Several trees were down and others had broken limbs. There would be broken windows. But the school had stood strongly against the storm without.
"It'll be worse inside," Cliff prophesied. "It's absolutely amazing how much rubbish the human race can leave behind it after such a short time."
"Litterbugs by nature," Donna murmured.
Back inside, everybody was packing up again. Donna went about warning mothers to see that the children with measles didn't get wet on their trips home. But now that they knew what was the matter with their offspring, and home was in the offing, nobody really had time for her.
Mrs. Frailey called to Cliff as they passed: "Thanks, Mr. Warrender, for getting me my hundred dollars back from that Poague. Imagine him! I knowed somebody was peddling the stuff around, but I never thought he had sense enough to be gettin' away with that sort of thing. Well, you never know."
"What will they do if their houses are damaged?" Donna wanted to know.
"Probably go home, anyway, if there's a room left that is roofed over," Cliff told her. "The excitement's over and they are tired. Home sounds mighty good to them right now. We'd better get the desks back in place and begin to check these people out. It'll be night before we can finish."
And they were busy. Shabby cars came and took families away, families who called back thanks for what had been done for them, or grumbles for what hadn't, youngsters who called to each other, making dates for some later time when the weather had cleared, mothers hurrying everyone along with weary nervousness, fathers gruff and impatient, or joking or staggering with the whiskey they had drunk for three days. There were all sorts and kinds, and Donna felt a warmth toward them as they went back to their places.
She and Mary sighed when at last there was some let-up in the stream, and grinned at each other.
"So you landed your man," Donna teased.
Mary preened herself. "I did that. But you know, I might never have if that woman hadn't nearly broken his head."
Donna laughed. "Cliff says it's sympathy that gets 'em. I wouldn't know."
Mary was instantly serious. "But I was sure— You and Cliff seemed so—"
"Give us time, woman," Donna protested. "We've never even had a date."
Hank had gone to a nearby garage and come back with his station wagon. "Bought it to take teams to other schools. Never expected to be taking a mother and baby to a hospital in it."
"Hospital?" Mary asked. "Is Missy—the baby —I thought they were doing fine."
Donna nodded. "So did I, though I've only talked to them through a crack in the door since those children got sick. I do hope the baby won't have measles."
"Nothing's the matter," Hank reassured them. "Jack thought it might be a good idea to see that she was doing as well as we thought for sure. He'd been saving money for the hospital and Donna here saved him that."