The Wanderer

“Just you wait,” Fritz smilingly told Hans Opfel when the latter indicated the growing pile of reports of the Wanderer and of the moon’s destruction. “Just you wait. When night comes, the jolly old moon will be up there all by himself — and laughing down at you!” He leaned lightly against the smooth case of the tide-predicting machine and patted it affectionately, almost hugged it. “You know what fools they are, don’t you?” he murmured infatuatedly.

Other minds accepted the situation.

Barbara Katz swabbed up some last fragments of egg and sausage with a section of buttermilk pancake soaking in one hundred percent maple syrup, pushed her coffee cup across the big kitchen table to Hester, and sighed her appreciation and gratitude. Outside the birds were warbling in the sunlight. The big old pendulum wall-clock said eight-thirty in Roman numerals. A big calendar showing a view of the Everglades hung below the clock.

Hester smiled broadly at Barbara as she poured out more of the wonderfully strong coffee, and said: “Seems more natural and wholesome-like, now old KKK got himself a real fancy girl instead of that doll.”

Helen, the younger colored woman, giggled and then looked away in mischief and embarrassment, but Barbara took it in her stride.

“I believe those are called Barbie dolls,” she remarked. “Well, my name happens to be Barbara, too — Barbara Katz.”

Hester laughed heartily at that, and Helen smothered more giggles.

“Why do you call him old KKK?” Barbara asked.

“Middle name Kelsey,” Hester explained. “Knolls Kelsey Kettering III. You Katz the fourth K.” And she started laughing again.

There was a long, soft creaking. “Shut the screen door, Benjy,” Hester said sharply out of her laughter, but the tall Negro didn’t move. He stood halfway through the door in his white shirt and his silver-gray trousers which had stripes of dark gray tape running down the seams. There was a big tuft of cotton in the top of the screen — a modern white fetish against flies.

“There’s the most monstrous low tide ever,” he informed them earnestly. “People walking straight out like they could get to Grand Bahama without wetting the ankle. Picking up fresh fish by the basket, some of them!”

Barbara sat straight up, set down her coffee cup and snapped her fingers.

“Other folk say TV ain’t working either — or radio,” Benjy added, looking at her, as did Hester and Helen.

“Do you know when low tide is, exactly?” Barbara asked intently.

“Seven-thirty, about,” Benjy answered without hesitation. “Hour ago. It have it all on the backs of those calendar sheets.”

“Tear off the top one,” she told him. “What kind of a car does Mr. K have?”

“Only the two Rolls,” he told her. “Limousine and sedan.”

“Get the sedan ready for a long trip,” she told him sharply. “All the extra gas she can carry — take it from the limousine! We’ll need blankets, too, and all Mister K’s medicines and lots of food and more of this coffee in thermos jugs…and a couple of those table-water bottles in the corner!”

They stared at her fascinatedly. Her excitement was contagious, but they were puzzled. “Why for, child?” Hester demanded. Helen started to giggle again.

Barbara looked at them impressively, then said: “Because there’s a high tide coming! As high as this one’s low — and higher!”

“That because of the — Wanderer?” Benjy asked, handing her the sheet she’d asked for.

She nodded decisively as she studied its back. She said: “Mr. K has a smaller telescope. Where would that be?”

’Telescope?” Hester asked with grinning incredulity. She said: “Now, why for — oh, sho, astronomy what you and Mr. K have in common. Now, I expect he put that one — the one he spy on the gals with — back in the gun room.”

“Gun room?” Barbara asked, her eyes brightening. “What about ready cash?”

“It’d be in one of the wall safes,” Hester said, frowning at Barbara just a little.

Chapter Twenty-two

The saucer students were at last beginning to feel alive again after their ducking and their exhausting race with the waves. The men had built a driftwood fire beside the empty highway near the low concrete bridge at the head of the wash, and everyone was drying out around it, which necessitated considerable comradely trading around of clothes and of the unwetted blankets and stray articles of dress from the truck.

Rama Joan cut down the trousers of her salt-streaked evening clothes to Bermuda shorts, ruthlessly chopped off the tails and half the arms of the coat, replaced the ruined dicky and white tie with the green scarf of her turban, and gathered her red-gold hair in a pony tail. Ann and Doc admired her.

Everybody looked pretty battered. Margo noticed that Ross Hunter appeared trimmer than the other men, then realized it was because, while most of them were getting slightly stubbly cheeks and chins, he simply still had the beard that had made him Beardy.