Robert Crews Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the slight breeze that felt like rather a winter wind. He limped toward water deep enough for swimming, but when there was only enough of it to cover his toes, he passed out—which event he learned of only when he came to, so much later that the sun, high overhead when he first gained the beach, had sunk almost to the horizon. His body was so sore generally that trying to change its position brought him pain, and his knee throbbed. He dragged himself from the wet sand up into the dry. He had a sense of having vomited while unconscious, given the rawness of his throat and the taste that remained in his mouth along with gritty sand. The side of him that had lain in the water was soaking. He struggled to expose it to what was left of the day, for the sun had dried him elsewhere.
    There could be no question of his swimming out and diving to the plane now. In his state of semidelirium, it even seemed that he had already done so and found nobody on board, a mystery that his weary mind could not cope with. He tried to take refuge in his state of damage, which was worse than those resulting from his car crashes or fistfights, for it partook more of soul than of body, and had to do with fundamental considerations that were at once unbearable but not to be denied. Had he left the others to die? Thus was he tormented, in and out of consciousness, throughout the night, which physically was bad enough, the temperature of the air falling rapidly as the sun sank without drying his wet half, and spiritually it was desolating.
    He managed at last to scoop up the surrounding sand, which retained some faint warmth from the sun, and from both sides to push it over his body so as to constitute the sort of burying-alive of which his latest previous experience had been at age nine or ten with his mother at the beach. In the simulated grave he survived the night. But he had no mental peace and did not sleep so much as continue fitfully to pass in and out of a coma in which he was dead to any feeling but anguish.
    When first light arrived he tried to convince himself of the necessity of meeting the day. It was convenient to remain supine while imagining that one had performed one’s duty. He had often done the like as a boy, without harm except perhaps when, at too advanced an age, he still indulged himself with the dream that he was peeing into the toilet while actually wetting the bed. Considerate of the maid, a recent Irish immigrant, he had balled the sheets and dropped them in his bathtub. Dealing with the mattress, however, was beyond his competence. Mary Frances did not inform on him but did provide a plastic mattress cover, demanding reimbursement for it from his allowance, which she claimed was larger than her wage, though he could never verify that assertion, for his father handled all money matters—to be precise, had the secretary do it, whoever filled that bill at the moment, for they were periodically changed so that his father at any given time had a young woman to minister to his professional and sexual needs.
    Lying in the cocoon of sand now, Crews found it comforting to suppose that it had hardened overnight into a kind of sarcophagus inside which he would eventually mummify, simply dry up, shrinking into a state that would at last be irreducible, the spirit having long since fled to the afterworld and the population of inquiet souls who wander on the shores of Avernus.
    They were all of them dead: his mother and father, his late companions in the airplane, everybody in the world, just look and see whether anybody was visible on this sunny morning in the sand beside the lake. But the three most recent dead were under water and decency and honor and respect for life demanded the recovery of the bodies. No one remained to perform such service but himself. There could be no further shirking of responsibilities, no further flight from humanity. He was trapped now, unless he would truly forsake life: his bluff was being