“Did you swallow any water?”
“No.”
We went a little way, and then she stopped.
“Frank, I feel funny inside.”
“Here, hold on to me.”
“Oh, Frank.
Maybe I strained myself, just then. Trying to keep my head up. So I wouldn’t gulp down the salt water.”
“Take it easy.”
“Wouldn’t that be awful?
I’ve heard of women that had a miscarriage. From straining theirself.”
“Take it easy.
Lie right out in the water.
Don’t try to swim.
I’ll tow you in.”
“Hadn’t you better call a guard?”
“Christ no.
That egg will want to pump your legs up and down.
Just lay there now.
I’ll get you in quicker than he can.”
She lay there, and I towed her by the shoulder strap of her bathing suit.
I began to give out.
I could have towed her a mile, but I kept thinking I had to get her to a hospital, and I hurried.
When you hurry in the water you’re sunk.
I got bottom, though, after a while, and then I took her in my arms and rushed her through the surf.
“Don’t move.
Let me do it.”
“I won’t.”
I ran with her up to the place where our sweaters were, and set her down. I got the car key out of mine, then wrapped both of them around her and carried her up to the car.
It was up beside the road, and I had to climb the high bank the road was on, above the beach.
My legs were so tired I could hardly lift one after the other, but I didn’t drop her.
I put her in the car, started up, and began burning the road.
We had gone in swimming a couple of miles above Santa Monica, and there was a hospital down there.
I overtook a big truck.
It had a sign on the back, Sound Your Horn, the Road Is Yours.
I banged on the horn, and it kept right down the middle.
I couldn’t pass on the left, because a whole line of cars was coming toward me.
I pulled out to the right and stepped on it.
She screamed.
I never saw the culvert wall.
There was a crash, and everything went black.
When I came out of it I was wedged down beside the wheel, with my back to the front of the car, but I began to moan from the awfulness of what I heard. It was like rain on a tin roof, but that wasn’t it.
It was her blood, pouring down on the hood, where she went through the windshield.
Horns were blowing, and people were jumping out of cars and running to her.
I got her up, and tried to stop the blood and in between I was talking to her, and crying, and kissing her. Those kisses never reached her.
She was dead.
Chapter 16
They got me for it.
Katz took it all this time, the $10,000 he had got for us, and the money we had made, and a deed for the place.
He did his best for me, but he was licked from the start.
Sackett said I was a mad dog, that had to be put out of the way before life would be safe.