Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “Do you teach skindiving?” Prissy voice, too; self-adoring.

  “I certainly do, Mam.” He let his face open up in a grin. “Especially to pretty ladies, Mam. That’s my specialty.” He especially made it flattery, and not any kind of a make.

  And a remarkable change occurred in her. The corners relaxed so the smile opened out into a real one, and her dark eyes opened more and got deep and friendly, had real warmth. That way she wasn’t really bad looking, for an old one.

  “Oh, it’s not for me!” she said in some confusion. “It’s for a friend of mine. My foster-son, really. Who is coming down. Today. He wants—” She reached in her purse as if she knew just where it was and pulled out and held up a wire as if she needed it for confirmation. “—he wants to learn skindiving.”

  “Then you’ve come to just the right place, Mam,” he said putting heartiness in his voice.

  Then a remarkable thing happened. For no reason that he could see the jowls clamped down again and the eyes got small and undeep again and the anxiety, or whatever it was, came back on her. Curiously, it even showed in the position of her back, which seemed to slightly bow itself suddenly. It was then that he knew she was crazy. Or awful close to it.

  “We’re staying with the Countess de Blystein,” she said; very prissy.

  “I know the Countess,” Bonham said promptly. “Not well, of course.” He did. He had met her. Everybody in the town knew Evelyn de Blystein a little.

  “Well, we are staying with she and the Count Paul. My husband, myself, and our foster-son. His name is Ron Grant I expect you’ve heard of him perhaps?”

  “I think so,” Bonham said. He had noted away the nominative pronoun error.

  “He’s a Broadway playwright You must have heard of The Song of Israphael. It ran three and a half years on Broadway.”

  “I think so,” Bonham said. “Yes.”

  “It was a very famous film. MGM brought it out. It won five Academy Awards.”

  “Yes. I saw the film,” Bonham said.

  Then he did remember it. He had seen it. About Pearl Harbor. About a sailor and a whore. He’d been in the Navy himself in the war, and he’d liked it. There was no bullshit in it. Or not much. But she was beginning to piss him off. Who cared? He smiled at her. “I remember it very well. I liked it.”

  “He’s quite famous, you know.” She didn’t come out and say he was very lucky to have such a client, but it was implied.

  “Yes, he certainly is,” Bonham had said. “And what is your name Mam?”

  “My name is Carol Abernathy. And my husband’s name is Hunt Abernathy.”

  “I see. Your husband’s here?”

  “Yes.” She smiled that smile. “I think I told you that.”

  Bonham ignored that “And will both of you be comin along, too?”

  “No, no. My husband won’t. He’s not interested. He’s a golfer. But I thought I might come along the first day to see.”

  “You should try it yourself, Mam. You’ll find its very exciting,” he had said, “and, I think, intellectually stimulating. The undersea life here in Jamaica is one of the richest in flora and fauna in the entire world.”

  The smile and the eyes had turned shy now. Vulnerable. “Well, I’m not sure I could do it. I’m an excellent swimmer, though.”

  “Anybody can do it. You don’t even have to be a good swimmer. I start people off in a swimming pool,” Bonham said gently, “for the first few days. Until I’ve taught them how to use the aqualung. It’s much safer that way. And my way is to teach safely. Actually, I taught my own mother to skindive, and she is almost eighty. She loves it now.” He kept his face completely open.

  The woman was smiling ingenuously now, and the eyes and mouth corners were a bit more open. “Well, perhaps I will. Give it a try, I mean. Tomorrow, then?”

  “Be glad to have you, Mam.”

  “What time, please?”

  “After lunch? Two? Two-thirty? Three?”

  “Don’t you have to let your food digest for four hours? Before?”

  “Not in a pool, Mam.”

  “Very well, at three then. Tomorrow.” She offered him the tight priss smile, this time, and turned to go. Then suddenly she turned back.

  And her face astounded Bonham this time. It still had the jowly, pinched-corners, priss look, but now the eyes had become like those of some very knowledgeable jungle cat. “There’s just one other thing.”

  “Mam?”

  “Ron—Mister Grant—plans on going to Kingston to actually learn his diving, I believe. From a man named Georges Villalonga?” She pronounced it French.

  “I know George,” Bonham said. He pronounced it American. “But I don’t think he’s in Kingston any more. I think he went out to the West Coast to work for US Di—”

  “Whether he’s still there or not, I would like very much for Mister Grant to do all his diving here, in Ganado Bay.” The voice still had its tight priss sound, but now there was a very sharp edge to it, too. A very sharp edge. “I’d much rather he didn’t go to Kingston at all.” She paused. “Do you follow me?”

  Bonham had stared expressionlessly into those eyes for quite a long moment. “I think so, Mam. You mean you’d like him to do all his learning and diving here with me because you trust my ability. Well, I’ll certainly try to help all I can.” Then he made himself grin. “Naturally, I wouldn’t like to lose a good, high-payin customer to Kingston.”

  She didn’t smile. “Good. We understand each other. Good-by.” And she turned and stumped—lumpished—herself, in that peculiar prissy bent-backed walk, out the door.

  “Mrs. Abernathy!”

  She turned back in the doorway.

  “Would you mind telling me who sent you to me?”

  “Why, yes,” she smiled. “The manager of the Royal Canadian Bank.” She turned and left.

  By now he was absolutely certain she was crazy. Just how or in what way, or why, he didn’t know enough to know. Things a guy had to do to make a living. That kind in divin you had to watch very carefully. Be prone to panic. He hoped she didn’t go. But maybe the guy—the boyfriend?—wouldn’t want to go either if she didn’t want to go. Some were like that. Damned women. Well, if he watched her close. He hated to lose two customers right now. Or even one.

  Letta’s salary was hardly keepin them goin this month. And this was February.

  Well, he had a pool checkout at the Royal Carib this afternoon. One unwealthy tourist.

  Probly, he thought as he had gone about getting the gear ready at the back of the shop, this Grant would turn out to be some kind of half-fag highfalutin snob type. If his gir—if his foster-mother was any good example. Well there was no accountin for tastes. As the old woman said as she kissed the cow. But why didn’t she want him to go to Kingston? If they didn’t get so terrible bad he couldn’t stomach it, he could do it. For the money. That kind, the richies, always wanted the top luxury treatment and anything else made them turn up their noses. He would give it to them, if he had it. If he ever got it, ever got a chance to get it.

  Deliciously—but with a grinding jealousy of acquisitiveness— he let himself dwell as he worked on the Naiad and his trip down to Kingston to look her over. There was hope there. If he could ever get her.

  You met all kinds of kooks in this business. That dame, for instance. He was pretty damn sure this Grant would turn out to be a highbrow prick.

  The weight of it on his broad back had made the tanks heavier as he carried them out of his old station wagon to go the Carib. That and the fact that he knew he’d have to do it. For the money.

  And just think, someday they would all be dead.

  The sudden thought opened up a hollow in Bonham, of amazement, disbelief, fear and depression. What he’d like to do this afternoon was go out and kill himself a shark. Whenever he got to thinking of his own eventual, inevitable death, and sometimes it lasted for days, the only thing that could snap him out of it was to get Ali and the boat and go out to his “Ol�
� Shark Hole” where there was almost always one or two hangin around and diving down deep and viciously with his fury and his fear spear himself one of those evil foulsmelling bastards with a killing head shot, a six or seven-footer Blue or Tiger or shovelnose. Even if he didn’t make a killing brain shot and had to cut the line, he’d get himself a hell of a ride out of it. And they weren’t goin to do anybody much good after that with a spear through their head from top to bottom through both jaws! Their brothers would take care of them down the line!

  Suddenly he wanted very badly to go. He didn’t take any buddies or his customers on these expeditions and usually went alone, with just Ali. Ali thought he was nuts. But it cleansed you and fixed you up, took everything bad away, everything. After that he felt like a man again. After that, a man didn’t have to worry about getting laid.

  But he had this pool checkout today.

  God! how Letta hated it. When he went shark shooting. Screamed like a fishwife. At the thought of his wife another hollow opened in him, but this one was of a different kind, too painful to bear, much worse than the death depression, and he suavely covered it over with a layer of something else, so it would not appear to be there. He had gone back to thinking about the Naiad, and about the equipment for the pool checkout.

  But as it turned out Grant was not a snooty type at all. Just the opposite, he was a very regular guy. Almost too regular a guy, if that was ever possible. And Bonham, who was much more worldly and sophisticated than he was ever willing to let anybody know—just as he never let them know about his university education—especially people he had to do business with—found him curiously naive, even boyish, for someone who had made as much money and acquired as much fame as he was supposed to have done—as he obviously had done.

  Well, maybe that was what artistic talent was. He didn’t know. What he didn’t know about artistic talent was just about everything.

  He had taken them out to the Royal Carib that first day. So he could work them in with his one unwealthy tourist, a nice young insurance man from downstate Illinois who was staying there, fortyish and beginning to go to fat, the kind of customer he was more used to handling. He would be able to afford to go out twice to the shallow reef and poke around before he went home to tell his pals at the country club about his skindiving experiences. And this way he could work in three paying lessons all at once and save an hour to spend on his constant cruising of the other hotels. He had to drum more business. The insurance man’s goodlooking wife only watched. Bonham had tried, but she was too scared and he couldn’t talk her into a lesson.

  That the boyish playwright was Mrs. Abernathy’s lover was clear from the start to Bonham’s jaundiced but unjudging eye. Didn’t make him no nevermind. Fortunately the woman crapped out at the start. She couldn’t learn to clear her mask even sitting down in the shallow end of the pool. She panicked every time. And when he halfway through got her to put the lung on and lie on the bottom at the shallow end thinking that might help, she couldn’t do that either. He hated to lose the money, but at least now he wouldn’t have to take her out and watch her closely all the time.

  Grant, on the other hand, was good. He was completely brave, although for some reason he didn’t seem to know it. He caught on fast, and he caught up with and even surpassed the insurance man, who was on his third day, by the end of the lesson.

  The second day he took them to the West Moon Over Hotel, because he had to take the insurance man, who was leaving in two days, out for his first dive on the shallow reef in the morning. The West Moon Over was the ritziest and most expensive hotel in Ganado Bay, and for this reason Bonham didn’t usually take people there for lessons unless they were registered there. But he figured a little publicity couldn’t do any harm. So he stopped by in the morning and told the manager who he was bringing in. Naturally they were glad.

  The pool was deserted when he gave Grant the lesson and quite suddenly, after he was all through with what he had to do with mask and lung and looking relieved, Grant began to do springboard diving. They had a regulation three-meter board at the West Moon Over (the only one in town except for the Country Club) and Grant just up and climbed it— and on his first dive did a beautiful, absolutely letter-perfect pike forward one and a half. Then he seemed to get caught up in the emotional spirit of it, Bonham sensed (perhaps because the pool was deserted), and began to do all manner of things: a beautiful layout full gainer to which he added both half twist and full twist; back one and a halfs tucked; flying mares, which was a layout swan held halfway down and finished off with a tucked front one; and then he finished it all off with two fulltwisting forward one and a halfs. Bonham thought he had never seen anything so beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

  The woman had come along to watch the lesson, but she didn’t seem to think anything very much of the springboard diving, or of any sports, Bonham decided—any sports which she could not do herself, he guessed. Luckily she didn’t come any more after that second day, and the men could be alone together.

  Bonham had been around pools and swimming all his life, and had actually swum backstroke for both his high school in Jersey and for the U. of Pa. He knew what that kind of near-letter-perfect three meter board diving entailed. The high degree of nervous and muscle coordination to start with, and then the work. The literally hours and hours and hours of constant practice, over and over and over, the hard falls and faulted dives that landed you flat on the water on your back or on your face. It was then that he began really to admire Grant for the first time. He did them absolutely beautiful, and he was beautiful doing them. Never mind the intellectual, playwright horseshit.

  Bonham had always loved springboard diving, and had always wanted to do it himself. But he had always been too big and too heavy for any regulation board. But he knew what it entailed. He had always secretly cursed his own huge and broadassed build, and Grant up on the board was absolutely beautiful with his tiny hips and the very wide shoulders and muscled, wellturned legs. It was a shame he wasn’t built just a little taller all over and he would be a perfect physical man.

  When he surfaced laughing after the last dive, he congratulated him, but not warmly. He made it very casual. “You’re pretty good.”

  Grant had grinned shyly and swum over. “I used to dive for a Navy team at Pearl. And then I just always sort of kept it up. I like it because it’s exciting and—well, it’s a little dangerous. You can get hurt. And I guess I like that.”

  “Sure,” Bonham grinned, “that’s the spice. It’s the same with the aqualung with spearfishin.”

  They had seemed to exchange a secret glance of special understanding, of complicity even, which the woman—if she noted it at all—did not acknowledge.

  Today, squatting on the jetty with his now gutted and freshly washed-down fish, and still whistling to himself inaudibly and almost tonelessly, Bonham thought back again to the physiological revelation he had had of Grant that day of the first springboard diving. Playwright or not, intellectual or not, Grant was an athlete with an athlete’s basic outlook, and Bonham understood athletes. He was one.

  That was why it was peculiar to see him with that peculiar woman. It had never occurred to him before, he didn’t know why, but now he began to think of Grant coming in on the buying of the schooner. It might be a very good idea. He didn’t know how much he was worth of course, or how much he would be able to put up. But anything would help. As far as that went. The woman of course would be against it from the word go. And she was clearly very involved in his life and decisions. How to handle her? He would have to think about that.

  Tossing all the fish into the big string bag he kept for catches, he walked back off the dock and up the little rise to where Ali would return with the car. It was too soon to tell, really, about Grant. But if he kept up to that basic athlete’s outlook he had shown with the springboard diving, he would come along and come up to snuff. Too soon to tell. But Bonham would know more about that after those four or five days over in Grand Bank. A
lmost certainly he would have to acquire the passion for diving and spearfishing, given his personality. He didn’t know anything about sailing. But he could learn. In some ways he speculated that Grant would make a better partner, and a better friend, than either Sam Finer or Orloffski.

  Bonham had his reservations, which he had not told Grant, about both of them. Especially Orloffski. Orloffski was a crude, cocky, loudmouth, stupid insensitive brute. Smaller than Bonham, he was nevertheless strong as hell and built like a pro football player, and he was a more than adequate spearfisherman and diver. But he was a lousy sailor. Bonham had been out with him on the cutter up in Jersey, and while Bonham knew quite well that he himself could handle the schooner all alone, he had watched Orloffski sail and knew equally well that Orloffski could never handle the schooner himself, though Orloffski loudly claimed he could. In addition, Orloffski was a pretty big drunk. Though they were all somewhat of that. But Orloffski was bad. And Bonham also suspected that he was some kind of a psychologically compulsive thief. That was a lot against. Still, what he was contributing to the deal was considerable. So considerable that the deal could not be swung without him.

  Sam Finer on the other hand was very smart. And tough. He had come up along some very hard tough route, and his grammar was as bad as Orloffski’s, but he was a smart businessman. “Bars will always make money, Al,” was one of his theories, “because people will always drink.” He knew nothing at all about sailing and admitted it. He was willing to serve as lowliest crew. And diving and spearfishing he adored. And he had the hard cash. But he was a very bad drunk. Worse than Orloffski. Because when he got drunk, he wanted to fight. Most of the time. And he was a mean fighter. Bonham had already bailed him out of three or four scrapes that might have gotten him killed, or at the least sent to jail. His wife would be coming down with him this time for the first time (they had only been married a couple months), and Bonham had never met her. Sam had met her in New York on a business trip, Bonham thought he remembered. Wasn’t she a model?