Complete Short Fiction by Hilbert Schenck

Author:Hilbert Schenck [Schenck, Hilbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

Sept. 8, 1600—Sept. 9, 0930

The destruction of Claude’s core spread disorganization outward in all directions. The polar air mass to the west, sensing weakness and disorder, now flowed inexorably eastward throughout the evening, and most of Claude’s western energy excesses disappeared in a heavy series of offshore rains and thundersqualls. To the east, the dying storm set several small and feeble children in motion, truncated, circumscribed pools of low barometer that were mostly eaten by the Greenland air mass or that spun themselves to death while moving and feeding from the same depleted patch of cooler ocean as their neighbors.

The great leader waves, no longer driven by a fifty-knot barometer hammer, turned into tremendously long-swell, low humps of water losing speed to friction and identity to the natural process of separation by period. As they came onto the south Long Island coast, they mounted the shallows close to shore, and suddenly, almost from nowhere, a series of steep, sharp, far-separated breakers hammered the Moriches, Shinnecock, and other inlets with high, regular surf, completely blocking the entrances for several hours. But no one was out facing Claude, and when the breakers dropped and were replaced by a steady hiss of sullen, hot rain, the boat and water people looked at each other and shook their heads in wonder at the miracle of their deliverance. At least a hundred old, wrinkled men turned to another hundred, identically leathery friends and they all said more or less the same thing, “What in Tophet won’t they think of next!”

The deluge of 300-mile-an-hour hail had turned the high-tech interior of the Tesla into a wrecked shambles. Cora and Ray had managed to plug the holes near the waterline with expanding putty, so the Tesla could roll and wallow without shipping more water, but the switch-gear for the engines, the communications equipment, and most of everything else was in ruin. For a while they amused themselves with the hand pump, getting water out of the Tesla, each berating the other for any slow or partial strokes during turns at the pump handle.

The rolling and pitching slowly abated, though the rain came down steadily, drumming on the aluminum hull. Cora lay tiredly back in her seat and her thoughts turned hard and bitter. They had won, but they had paid too high a price. She remembered Milton’s Stein’s calm, professional voice as he spoke of death and ruin in a flat spin, just before the Tesla’s radio gear was smashed by a grapefruit-sized lump of ice. Their hard-fought triumph seemed spoiled and stupid.

At that moment Ray, who was peering at his bare feet and his socks, hanging on the control wheel to dry, said in a thoughtful voice, “I wonder if fags get to go to heaven?”

The comment seemed entirely too much for Cora, and she bared her large teeth in rage, then turned to Ray. “Listen,” she said in her most acid tone, “do you realize why you’ve got this stupid thing about hating homosexuals, Ray? I’m going to tell you.

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