Night Magic Part 8

"Over there" was a clump of trees, a tangle of weeds, and an orange and black rubber raft overturned on the bank.

"Probably belongs to some hunters," McClain observed, thrusting Puff at her before moving toward it. He had dropped Clara's hand when they had stopped. She vaguely missed the comforting warmth of his grip. Holding Puff, who seemed to have resigned himself to being hauled about, she splashed after McClain.

"You don't mean for us to take that thing," her nod indicated the flimsy looking raft, "out there, do you? It looks like some kid's toy!"

McClain looked briefly at the swollen river, then back at Clara. "It's the best I can come up with. Unless you want to go on walking through the woods until we come across the dogs again."

That silenced Clara. She watched as he leaned over to pull the raft into the water after a wary look around. Whoever belonged to the raft was nowhere in sight. Beneath the octagon shaped vessel was a pair of aluminum oars, neatly placed. Careful that his feet never left the water, McClain grabbed those too and threw them with a clatter of metal on metal into the raft, which was already beside him in the creek. The thing appeared to float, or at least its back side did. The front end was resting on the pebbly creek bottom beside McClain's foot. Clara could see at least two black rubber patches from where she stood. There was no way the thing would carry McClain, herself and Puff down the swollen river.

"Hop in," he said, pulling the ridiculously small raft out into the middle of the creek, Clara was relieved to see that the front end floated as well. Temporarily, anyway.

"It doesn't look very river worthy," she protested nervously, eyeing the sausage-roll sides and black rubber bottom that was streaked with mud and littered with leaves. The chubby, patched sides reminded her of innertubes she swam with as a child. Fun then, maybe, but nothing she cared to attempt now. Not on a river, when her life was at stake.

"What do you want, the Pacific Princess?" he asked, naming a well-known cruise ship as he waded around beside her. Before she knew what he was about, one arm slid around her shoulder and the other around her knees. She was lifted and deposited w.i.l.l.y-nilly on the floor of the raft before she could do more than squeal. Puff yowled and leaped for safety at this unexpected occurrence. Fortunately he too landed in the raft. Clara's bottom was immediately as wet as the rest of her from the inch or so of ice cold water that had settled in the raft's bottom. Puff, feeling water, that most dreaded of all substances, on his feet, yowled like a banshee and leaped up into the air, only to land again in the same puddle. He looked wildly around, then appeared to realize that there was no dry place on which to rest. With a moan, he lifted a paw, shook the water from it, washed it- then had to set it down again into the mess. He moaned again and repeated the process.

"Listen, can the he-man stuff," Clara said furiously, sitting upright and glaring at McClain as she clutched both sides of the furiously rocking raft. He was already behind it, pushing it out toward the river. The water swirled up past his knees to his thighs.

"I'm perfectly willing to plant my a.s.s in the raft while you push it out," he said, pulling his poncho over his head and tossing it to her for safekeeping as he spoke. The words were matter-of-fact, but there was a glint in his green eyes that Clara disliked. She made no reply, just clutched the poncho to her chest and eyed him resentfully. If she argued with him at this particular point she feared she just might find herself waist-deep in the muddy water. Which, when she thought about it, she was perfectly willing to leave to him.

"Move to the rear, would you? It'll make it easier to push."

Not being blessed with Puff's coordination, Clara had problems getting her bottom off the bottom of the raft. The rubber gave with every movement she made, and in the end she was forced to scoot backwards to the spot McClain indicated in the stern. Puff she set in the middle. He moaned and repeated his attempts at drying his paws.

"At least most of you can dry off," she told him, draping McClain's poncho around her neck and trying her best to brush the water off her soaked jeans. It was impossible, of course, with water sloshing in the bottom of the raft. After a few minutes she resigned herself to freezing.

In minutes they were beyond the protective banks of the creek. The current was much swifter in the river. The water was up to McClain's chest when he hauled himself up over the side. The raft heeled precariously. Clara threw herself as far to the opposite side as she could, leaning out over the swirling water at a ninety degree angle. Puff climbed her arm with a yowl to sit perched on her shoulder as water sloshed into the raft in McClain's wake.

"I knew I'd find a use for you two sooner or later," he said with evident satisfaction, sitting up and then kneeling as he retrieved the oars from where they had rolled beneath the sides.

"What's that?" Clara asked suspiciously, straightening but still holding tightly to the side with one hand as she dislodged Puff with the other.

"Ballast," he answered with a grin, pulling his poncho from around her neck and yanking it over his head before thrusting an oar at her. Then he crawled forward before she could brain him with her oar.

Fortunately, since Clara had never maneuvered a raft in her life (outdoor pursuits were not much in her line) the thing floated downriver with the minimum of a.s.sistance, drawn along by the rain swollen current. All kinds of debris swirled in the water around them, branches and even whole trees, rubber tires, a grocery cart, aluminum cans, cardboard boxes. At one point the bloated carca.s.s of a cow floated past, swirling in slow circles, accompanied by the sickening stench of rotting flesh; McClain speculated aloud that it must have fallen in from some slippery bank and had been unable to get out before it drowned. On either side of the river, which was perhaps a quarter of a mile across, tall trees in their autumn foliage lined the banks. That the water rose partway up the trunks of some of them was evidence of the river's recent rise.

"Do you have any idea where we are?" Clara had lost all sense of direction during that wild run from the tracking dogs. McClain was paddling in a desultory manner, not so much to propel the raft but to keep it on course and away from both the banks with their hidden obstacles and the swiftly running center of the river.

"Well, we ditched the car just to the south of Pipers Gap. Since then we've been moving in a sort of southwesterly direction. We may even be in North Carolina by this time. We're certainly headed that way."

"What river is this, do you know?"

McClain pursed his lips. "The New? It's just a guess, but if this isn't it we're near it. Geography was never my best subject."

It hadn't been Clara's, either. The only rivers she knew were the Mississippi, the Ohio, and of course the Potomac. None of which this one was. The New River seemed as likely as any.

"McClain-"

He sighed. "Why don't you call me Jack? The way you say 'McClain' reminds me of my old drill sergeant, the terror of Parris Island. I hate being reminded of Sergeant Jackson. He cussed me out a minimum of ten times a day."

"What for?" Clara thought the name Jack suited him much better than the John he had been christened, but she felt a little awkward at the idea of calling him by his first name. When she called him McClain it served to set a distance between them, a distance that she wasn't sure she wanted to eliminate. Her thoughts were momentarily diverted by the idea of him as a green young recruit blanching before a tough drill sergeant.

"Fun. He liked watching people squirm. He was a real a.s.shole. He finally bought the farm in Nam. Nailed by his own troops, I heard."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"Were you there?"

"When old Iron b.a.l.l.s bought it? Nope. Too bad, too."

"I meant in Vietnam."

"Yeah."

Clara shook her head. He had his back to her so he didn't see the exasperation evident in her gesture. Getting information out of him was about as easy as keeping Puff out of the refrigerator.

"You were in the marines?"

"Yeah."

"How old were you?"

"Twenty, twenty-one. I dropped out of college to join up. More fool me."

"When was that? The late sixties?"

"Sixty-eight and nine.Which makes me thirty-eight, if that's what you're getting at. Not that much older than you, I'd guess."

"I only just turned thirty," replied Clara, stung.

"That's what I said," he answered smugly, and again Clara had to fight the urge to bop him with her oar. There was a moment's silence as she struggled with an acute case of piqued pride.

"So what was it like, Vietnam?"

"What is this, twenty questions?" He finally turned to look at her. His eyes were narrowed, his jaw hard. There was tension in the set of his broad shoulders.

"I was just curious. Curiosity is a writer's stock in trade, you know. You never know. If you tell me all about it your life story might end up in one of my books."

"G.o.d forbid."

Clara was affronted. "They're very good books."

"I'll take your word for it."

"They are!"

"Okay, they are. Gloria's a big fan of romance novels. That's her biggest problem. She keeps expecting Mr. Wonderful to come charging up on a white horse and carry her off with him."

Clara's eyes narrowed. "Poor woman. Her life must be rife with disappointment."

McClain looked suspiciously at her over his shoulder. "Is that some kind of dig at me?"

"Certainly not. But to a woman who's waiting for a knight in shining armor you must certainly seem like the b.o.o.by prize of the century."

"You know, you've got a d.a.m.ned nasty tongue. No wonder you're not married."

Clara glared at his broad back. He hadn't even bothered to turn around to deliver the insult, which added it to injury.

"How do you know I'm not? Maybe my husband is traveling on business or something."

"You don't wear a wedding ring."

"So? A lot of women don't anymore, Mr. Dark Ages."

"You don't kiss like a married woman."

"Maybe it depends on whom I am kissing." She thought she injected a nice scathing note into that. He couldn't see how her cheeks burned at the memory of their kiss.

"Besides," he added softly, still without looking around, "I read the bio inside the back cover of your book. 'Miss Claire Winston, who has vowed never to marry until a man as irresistible as her fictional heroes comes along, resides with her mother on her family's antebellum estate, Jollymead, in the horse country of Virginia.' "

He quoted the last in a mocking falsetto that made Clara grit her teeth and flush to her hairline. She had hated the way the blurb writers worded that bio from the first time she had seen it. Which had been much too late to keep it out of her book.

"Oh shut up," she said. "It's not a disgrace to be unmarried, you know. Not in this day and age."

"Then why does it embarra.s.s you so much?" That soft taunt hit home. Clara glared impotently at the back of that close-cropped black head, imagined with a moment of real pleasure what it would be like to send her oar arching into intimate contact with it, and dropped the idea with deep reluctance. She had no doubt that his retaliation would be immediate and extremely unpleasant.

"You shouldn't have too much trouble landing a man, you know," the ape with the paddle continued in a soft, goading voice. "You're not unattractive, exactly. You could use a little makeup and a trip to a good hairdresser, and you could maybe stand to lose about ten pounds, but on the whole I'd say you're as good looking as a lot of the gals with husbands."

"Well, thank you very much," Clara spat. She had gone rigid at his catalogue of her "virtues," and now sat clenching her fists as she glared daggers at his back. "Coming from a box-faced, squash-nosed Neanderthal I'll take that as a compliment."

"Maybe it's your kissing technique," her tormentor continued musingly. "It certainly could use improvement. I'd liken kissing you to sucking on an overripe tomato. Lots of mush, but no texture or bite."

"Why, you..." That did it. Retaliation or not, she was going to brain him. She surged to her feet, swinging the oar. The raft bucked wildly, the oar missed its mark by a mile, he cursed and looked over his shoulder- and she fell into the river with a splash that rivaled any ever made by Moby d.i.c.k.

When she surfaced seconds later, sputtering and choking on the muddy water, Puff was staring at her over the side of the raft and McClain was laughing so hard that she hoped for a minute that he would fall into the river, too. But he didn't, of course. Instead, he obligingly stretched his oar toward her, and when she caught it hauled her close to the side. Of course, with her clothes soaking wet and her natural athletic inept.i.tude, she could not heave herself aboard. He had to reach down, grab the waistband of her jeans, and haul her over the side. For a moment Clara flopped around the bottom of the raft like a landed fish, glaring at his soggy sneakers which were all of him that she could see. Then she scrambled to her hands and knees, crawling precariously through the two inches of water she had brought to huddle in the stern, wrapping her arms around her body in a vain effort to stop herself from shivering. Puff took one look at her and turned tail, marching with great dignity as close to McClain as he could get before turning to glare at her. McClain guffawed loudly as she scowled right back at him. Her attention shifted to McClain; thoughts of murder ran rampant in her head.

"I hate you," she said with conviction.

"Oh, and I was hoping you'd think I was irresistible," he said with a simper, then roared again at the picture she made clenching her fists and glaring at him, soaked from head to toe in muddy water, drenched hair straggling over her face, each matted strand sending its own individual rivulet over the soaked poncho, smears of mud marking her left cheek, and an enormous puddle of water forming around her bottom.

"You are a-" she started furiously. He shook a finger at her.

"Uh- uh," he said. "Any more insults out of you and I won't let you wear my blanket. You'll just have to sit around in those soaking wet clothes until you freeze."

His warning effectively silenced her. She glared at him as he pulled his poncho over his head and pa.s.sed it to her. If she hadn't been absolutely freezing she would have told him to take it and stick it where the sun don't shine. As things were, she accepted it with poor grace.

The idea of undressing with him sitting two feet away, even though he had his back turned as he guided the raft, made her grit her teeth. He was the most loathsome man she had ever met; she hated him; she despised him; she hoped Rostov caught him and tortured him to death. It was what she would like to do herself if she could. But if she did not get her clothes off soon and get into something dry and warm, she thought she would die. So, fixing him with a killing stare that his occasionally heaving shoulders only sharpened, she kicked off her soggy boat shoes, rolled down her dripping jeans, and pulled the soaked poncho and flannel shirt over her head. She hesitated for a moment over her teddy, which when wet was nearly transparent, throwing him a suspicious look. But his attention seemed fixed on the upcoming curve in the river- and the teddy was as clammy as the rest. Sliding the spaghetti straps down her shoulders, she quickly stepped out of it and pulled his relatively dry poncho over her head. Oh, blissful warmth! She had not realized how bone cold she was until she experienced the rough comfort of that blanket, still warm from his body. Shivering, she sat on the back roll of the raft, careful to hang on so as not to fall off backwards but unable to sit any longer in that puddle of freezing water on the bottom. Her feet could not escape, however. She leaned forward, careful to keep the tails of the poncho out of the water, wrapped her legs with her arms, and watched her feet turn blue.

"I take that back about you needing to lose ten pounds," the fiend said softly. "Five would do it."

As he had no doubt intended, the mocking revelation that he had watched her undress sent her temper soaring again. But she was too cold and too miserable to attempt any further overt action. Seething impotently, she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. One day... one day she would make him pay.

"You are undoubtedly the most insufferable man I have ever met in my life," she said with conviction. Then, setting her jaw resolutely, she pretended he didn't exist as she wrung out her soaking clothes and arranged them along the sausage rolls at her side as best she could in hopes that they would dry.

XII.

Half an hour later it was dark. Clara was shivering uncontrollably as she bailed water from the bottom of the raft with her shoe, a task that the heartless beast in the bow had set her to, telling her that if she didn't want them to swamp she would bail. As her shoes didn't hold much, and her sojourn overboard had brought in quite a bit, the task promised to take a long time. And she was freezing in the meantime. Between the chill of the night and her nakedness, the blanket that had seemed so warm when she had first donned it now was little protection.

"McClain, I'm freezing," she said finally. He shrugged and kept paddling.

"I'm also starving."

"It was your cat that ate our lunch."

"So? I'm still starving. And I have to go to the bathroom."

"Go over the side."

Clara gave up. He was the most unfeeling man she had ever met. She was probably going to die in the miserable little rubber boat and he wouldn't care a snap. He would just toss her body into the river.

She alternately bailed and fumed silently, shivering all the while. The river at night was an eerie place, not as dark as the shrouded forest on either side but a glistening black swath cut through the shifting shadows. Strange rustlings came from the bushes along the bank. McClain was careful to stick fairly close to sh.o.r.e, both to avoid the possible sweep of a helicopter down the river and the treacherous plethora of objects that littered the river toward the middle. Thus Clara was able to make out slinking shapes of animals as they crept from the trees to drink at the river's edge. Once she even thought she saw a bear and its cubs, but they were far ahead so she couldn't be sure. Just the thought of walking through a forest where bears lived made her shiver more than she was already.

The moon came up, a glimmering white sickle occasionally obscured by the dark clouds that blew across the sky. Stars twinkled in the narrow overhead path that was visible from the river. The wind picked up and grew colder, carrying with it the scent of pine needles and rotting worms in equal proportions. Huddled in the poncho which was too narrow and reached to perhaps her knees when she stood up (which she now knew better than to do), Clara thought she had never been more miserable in her life.

McClain seemed tireless, right at home under such adverse conditions, she thought, eyeing him with dislike. Of course, he wasn't sitting around nearly naked with damp hair, either. Only Puff seemed to echo her discomfort. He was pacing up and down between the two of them, staring toward sh.o.r.e, and now and then uttering a piercing yowl.

"What ails the hairy monster now?"

Correctly interpreting McClain's reference to mean Puff, Clara glared at his back.

"At a guess, I'd say A: he's hungry, and B: he probably has to go to the bathroom."

"He's not nearly as hungry as I am, thanks to him. And as for the other, tough. He can hold it."

"He can only hold it so long," Clara warned with malicious enjoyment. "He has a bladder problem. He's a very old cat, you know."

"Great."

McClain sounded about as cheerful as she felt, which paradoxically improved her mood. She hoped he was miserable. He deserved to be miserable...

Puff yowled again, the sound more piercing than ever.

"You keep that thing as a pet?" McClain demanded with apparent disbelief. "I'd sooner keep a vampire bat."

"I'm sure you would," Clara responded sweetly. Puff yowled again.

"All right, all right." There was some hope for McClain after all, Clara decided with surprise. This remark had been addressed directly to Puff. "Hold on, will you? We need to stop for the night anyway."