Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “And I also wanted to talk to you about your uh foster-mother there,” Cathie Finer said, her voice getting a little straighter.

  “Yeah?” Grant said. “What about?”

  “Well, first place, she’s not really your foster-mother, is she?” Cathie Finer said quietly. “She’s your mistress, isn’t she?”

  Only a few people had ever asked him that question point-blank. Lucky had been one. He had always denied it. “She was,” he said, not really knowing why he was admitting it now.

  “I like her,” Cathie Finer said. “She’s got a lot of marvelous qualities in her. She’s a nice woman. And she’s just about to crack up.”

  “You think so?”

  “I sure do. And I’m guessing that it’s all because of you, isn’t it?”

  Grant wanted to talk suddenly. “Well, it is and it isn’t, you know? This thing you see in her’s been going on a long time, growing a long time. I’ve been there and seen it grow. She used to be marvelous. When she was younger. Or else I was just too young and green to see that she wasn’t.” He stopped to collect his thoughts, which were in some confusion. He couldn’t remember what he meant to say next. He found he was both shocked and surprised by Cathie Finer’s sympathy for Carol, and a little angered. “Well, you see, I don’t know what I can do about it. If she is beginning to crack up.”

  “She broke down and sort of cried three times this afternoon when she and I were talking.”

  “Did she talk about me to you, you mean?”

  “No, no. Not at all. Except for that son shit, you know?”

  “Well, she helped me a lot when I was younger and just starting out. She and her uh her husband, who is down here in Jamaica with us now you know, practically supported me. But, hell, Cathie, she’s old enough to be my mother. No, now! I mean it. Literally. She’s eighteen years older than I am. And I’ve paid them both back pretty much, pretty well. Should I be expected to throw away the whole rest of my life for her?”

  Cathie Finer shifted a little in her chair. “Well, it’s not my problem, of course. I shouldn’t butt my nose in. But I liked her. And I just wanted you to know how close to the edge she is.”

  “You really think so? But she’s been more or less like that for three years now. Almost exactly the same. Listen, Cathie, do you know a girl named Lucky Videndi?”

  “Lucky Videndi? Lucky Videndi? Why, yes! Yes, I do know her! Not very well. She never did very much modeling. But I used to see her at a few parties. She had some little bit of loot of her own, I think.” She looked at Grant closely. “So that’s how it is?”

  Grant flushed for the second time. “That’s how it is. Just like with you and Sam.”

  “She’s a real beauty! . . . Well, that poor lady!” Cathie said, helplessly. Then, as his second phrase took effect, she turned and looked down at her husband sitting with Bonham, and smiled proudly. In Grant’s mind a small rebellion took place, something he did not want, did not want his mind to think, but which his mind maliciously went ahead and thought anyway. He had known her quite intimately, that weekend, and his mind viciously began recalling her in full intimate detail. His mind was not as gallant or gentlemanly as he was. She had peculiarly shaped labia minora, for example. Nobody can take that way from us, his mind giggled.

  At the same time from the other end of the room, as Cathie continued to smile fondly toward Finer, Grant overheard the words “stock”, “loan”, and “interest”. “. . . don’t want any stock . . . your baby . . . longterm loan . . . low rate of interest . . . two percent . . . even one and a half . . . just don’t want to own stock in another man’s ...”

  Cathie Finer turned back to him. “Wish you luck anyway, Ron,” she said. Then she shook her head. “What I really mean is, I wish that poor lady, that poor Mrs. Abernathy luck. She’s the one that’s going to need it.”

  “Let’s talk about something more pleasant,” Grant said. “What about your husband? Do you think Sam will go in on Bonham’s schooner deal?”

  Cathie Finer’s face got cautious. “I try not to know anything about Sam’s businesses. But I know he loves diving with a real passion. And he has a great hero-worship for Al Bonham.” She smiled brilliantly. “He’s small, you know, smaller than you. He loves to have big men around him. . . .

  “Now let me ask you something.

  “Why do you think it was that you and I never really made it together?”

  “Ahhh,” Grant said. “Who the hell knows? That was what, more than two years ago. I guess, just guessing you understand, neither one of us really wanted to make it with somebody then. We both have changed a lot since then.”

  “But you really have it solid and hard for Lucky Videndi, do you?” Cathie smiled.

  “I sure do. At least, as far as I can tell now.”

  “Well, as you told me a while ago, good for you.”

  Down at the other end of the room the two talking men got up and came toward them. Sam Finer hardly came up to Bonham’s armpit.

  “What have you two been yakking so hard about?” Finer said in his high voice, his rockhard eyes moving fast from one to the other and back. He was pretty drunk, too. And it was easy to see he was an intensely jealous man.

  “Mostly talking about diving,” Grant said easily, and then grinned. “And a little bit about whether you might be interested in going in on Bonham’s schooner.” I’ve had your broad, you dumbhead, his mind giggled suddenly. He hated his mind.

  Finer grinned drunkenly. “If you were pumping my wife about any of my business affairs, I’m sure you didn’t get very far.”

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  “But,” Finer said, “I think I can tell you, I guess it’s safe enough to tell you, it looks like Bonham’s going to get his fucking schooner.”

  From behind him Bonham nodded once, happily, as Grant stood up quickly. “Well! I think that calls for something! Jesus! I’m glad! A congratulations drink at the bar maybe? John!” he called.

  The black barman, bored as only a black barman can be when he is amongst a bunch of happy white drunks and is wanting to close up and go home, began setting up four glasses. He couldn’t have cared less about Bonham’s schooner, or anything else, and almost certainly hadn’t even been listening.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Sam Finer growled suddenly, and his eyes just as suddenly got dangerous. “Aint you glad Mister Bonham’s gonna get him a schooner?”

  “Hey, hey,” Bonham said quietly, and Grant watched Cathie get up quickly and go stand just a tiny bit in front of Sam’s right shoulder.

  “Oh, yes, sahr,” the barman said. His face grinned. “I is veddy hoppy.”

  “Then set up a glass for yourself!” Finer ordered.

  The barman did. And when they drank the toast, doing it very formally, holding their glasses high to each other while Grant pronounced it, he calmly drank it with them.

  Sam Finer slammed his glass butt-down hard on the bar, and put his arm around his wife. “All I want is for us to be on that first cruise.”

  “That’s for sure,” Bonham said quietly, “and absolutely certain.”

  “Come on, old lady,” Finer grinned, “let’s go hit the sack. I’m drunk and lonesome and beat. I need me some loving.”

  When they had gone, Bonham let out a long, tension-relaxing “whew!”

  “Will he remember in the morning?” Grant said.

  “Oh, sure. I’ve seen him a lot drunker than that. I’m beat too as a matter of fact. But I aint going to bed. John,” he said to the barman, “give us one more and we’ll let you close up and go home.”

  “Sure thing, Misteh Bonham,” the barman grinned.

  “He’s not bad, you know. It’s just he gits a little rambunctious sometimes when he’s drunk.”

  “No need tell me. I know the type.” He filled their glasses.

  “You’re not going to sleep?” Grant said as they touched glasses.

  “No,” Bonham said very matter-of-factly.

 
“You think he’ll really come through?”

  “Yeah, he’ll come through. He’s like my grandfather used to say: ‘My word is my bond.’ But only as a loan. He won’t take any stock. I don’t know why. But ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’”

  “How much is he letting you have?”

  “Ten thousand.”

  Grant whistled, and raised his eyebrows.

  Bonham acknowledged this with a nod. “It’s a real break. Of course, he’ll get all his divin and diving trips free. In perpetuity. As they say.”

  “Diving vacations could cost him almost that much in five years,” Grant said. Bonham nodded. “You’re really not going to bed?” Grant asked.

  “No, I’m going in to town,” Bonham said matter-of-factly. “Maybe get me some of that handsome black ass. You should pardon the expression, John.”

  “Harr, Misteh Bonham,” John grinned.

  “This is a day I don’t want to forget. I never really thought he’d come through. You want to come along?”

  Grant thought it over while he finished his drink. “Your pal Orloffski didn’t help you a whole hell of a lot.”

  “No,” Bonham said. “He didn’t, did he? Well,” he said and sighed, “I told you he was a clot.”

  The British word sounded strange in his American mouth, to Grant. Go to town? An explosive charge was working in him, probably from all the booze he’d put away today. Then there was this sort of raging disgust at himself over the way at least part of him had reacted to Cathie Finer. And he didn’t want to have to see Carol Abernathy, should she still be up.

  “Sure. I’ll come. But we have to be up and ready to go divin by eight.”

  Bonham grinned from behind his stormcloud eyes. “The hell with it. We’ll just stay up all night then.”

  “All right. Good!” Grant said just as toughly.

  As it turned out, they didn’t stay up all night. They were back by five-thirty. But in the light of what happened after that, it might have been better if they had stayed up. “But how’re we gonna get there?” Grant asked as they left John in his bar cleaning up. “Oh, that’s the easiest part,” Bonham promised. It appeared that the hotel manager had three cars on the premises, and the oldest most beat-up one of the three, a tiny British-made station-wagon, was always kept reserved for Bonham when he was here. The keys were in it. Sometimes he took clients diving in it, in the daytime, on the other side of the island. “But won’t somebody steal it? Like that?” Grant asked as he climbed in.— “What would they do with it?” Bonham said. “They couldn’t drive it, or hide it, on the island. And they couldn’t get it off. There’s only about four hundred people live on this rock.” He had thoughtfully brought along a bottle of scotch whiskey from the hotel bar, and they each had two slugs from it on the mile and a half trip in to the town.

  In the pale light of the thin crescent moon the town itself, named—like so many other tiny Caribbean towns on tiny islands—simply Georgetown, had an eerie aspect. It consisted of maybe sixty ramshackle buildings made of coral rock and wood with tin roofs, and of these twelve were warehouses and six were bars. Not one wall could truly be said to be in plumb, and all in all it made the village of Ganado Bay look like a sleek great modern city. Like in any port town at two in the morning, whereas the respectable places such as warehouses and homes were shut up tight and darkened, all of Georgetown’s six gin mills down by the wharves were wide awake and going full blast. And as long as any money was coming in they would stay that way.

  One of the reasons they did not stay out all night was because on the way into town in the car Grant made it plain that he was not on the lookout for any fucking. “You aint?” Bonham said, though he still did not use the word itself, and then he grinned. “From the way you looked under that towel back at the hotel when I woke you up, you looked about ready for something.” So for the first time Grant confessed to him that he had himself a new girl in New York that he might marry and that he was uh—ludicrous phrase—keeping himself for. The big man’s face changed instantly and got respectable and he nodded his great head ponderously with equally ludicrous understanding; but it put a sort of damper on things because he too then decided, with gentlemanly thoughtfulness, that he too should not try to get laid either. So they went from joint to joint, drinking more and more whiskey and eating more and more hamburgers, watched the various crops of available girls, and talked about diving and courage. Bonham was not worried about Grant’s courage; he had seen him in two fairly tight spots, the swim through the cleft into the big cave and the shooting of the ray, though neither was seriously dangerous, and he had functioned perfectly fine. He had also seen his springboard diving—which was why he let him do those things so fast, in the first place. Bonham would trust him anywhere completely, soon’s he had little more experience. But even such talk could not keep two drunken men awake forever.

  Being out all night with Bonham in a port town that Bonham knew was an experience. Two drunken seamen from a freighter that was in, who showed up and as quickly disappeared, were the only white people that they saw. Bonham knew maybe half of the people that they met, and some of them were always coming over to shake hands and offer to buy a drink. He had been to Grand Bank only four times with diving clients, but anybody who met him apparently did not forget him. Being with him was also comforting. Not since his youth in the Navy when he would go on pass with four or five buddies had Grant felt so secure among the pimps and whores, thieves and con-men, brawlers and drunks of a waterfront port town—colored or white. Some of the stevedores who worked on the local docks were powerfully built, mean-looking men and all of them were drunk, but nobody bothered Bonham. And clearly nobody was about to. He sat like a solid small mountain at whichever table he happened to be, eating more hamburgers and drinking more whiskey, and his dark stormcloud eyes got brighter and more stormy. He was perfectly polite to everyone, but everyone was perfectly polite to him. But even all of this could not keep Grant’s head from dropping lower and lower toward the table as the time wore on. He had not been nearly so drunk either of the other two times he had been drunk today. He had not been nearly so drunk anywhere, for a long time. His nose was almost touching the beerwet Formica tabletop when Bonham staggered over to him from somewhere and said thickly, “Cmon. Lesh get outa thish.”

  “The spark’sh gone out. There’sh no fire. Shit, it aint worth it,” he said when they were outside in the incredibly fresh air. “Whew! What a drunk!”

  The moment he climbed into the little car, though he was drunk, Grant caught a strong whiff of sex in the air of the interior. Aha! so Bonham did get himself laid after all. But then he wondered. It could, in this joint, just as easy have been any other couple, staggering outside to find the first car they could to hump in. He said nothing.

  Though he was staggering when on his feet, Bonham drove cautiously, very slowly and well. And of course there were absolutely no other vehicles on the long straight road from Georgetown to the hotel. And the marvelous air had sobered and wakened both of them a little bit.

  “Why do we drink like this?” Grant croaked suddenly from his side as he dully watched the seaside hotel come into view in the headlights at the end of the straight, flat road.

  Bonham didn’t answer for a moment. “Oh, to stand ourselves; and other people,” he said calmly, and turned the little car carefully into its parking space on the grass. By five-thirty they were in bed asleep.

  The last thing Grant heard before he dropped off was Bonham saying from the other bed, “The hell with them. I’m gonna lock the door. Let ’em go out by themselves tomorrow morning. We’ll go in the afternoon.” As he fell bodily into peaceful drunken sleep, Grant thoroughly agreed.

  But it was not to happen that way. At ten minutes of eight, they were awakened by an enormously loud pounding on the door of the room. It was Carol Abernathy, and she was cursing them and yelling at the top of her voice for them to get the fuck up in there.

  Almost automatically, Gran
t was on his feet and stumbling toward the door in his shorts, his eyes still gummed almost shut and his head feeling like an overripe squash—anything to stop that crazy embarrassing screeching.

  A muffled “What the hell?” came from Bonham’s sheeted bulk, and he too sat up. “For God’s sake, yes!” he declared in agreement. “Open the door and let her in and tell her to go and—”

  He never finished, because Grant had already flipped the lock and flung open the door. There was Carol, in a bathing suit and terrycloth robe, in her right hand—rather awkwardly—she brandished the eight-inch blade of Grant’s razorsharp diving knife which Bonham had sold him in Ganado Bay. It was with the butt of this knife that she had been pounding so incredibly loudly on the door. She advanced with it, swinging it amateurishly before her, slicing widely with it back and forth, and Grant backed away. A glance at the bureau where he had put it last evening showed him the plastic scabbard was still there. She had sneaked in during the night and taken it while they were gone. From the other bed Bonham was staring at him with his eyebrows up and an astonished, disbelieving look on his face.

  “You lazy no-good sons of bitches!” Carol Abernathy yelled at them, swinging the knife. Her face was tomato-red. “Drunken bums! Whoremongers! You’re going diving whether you want to or not! And I hope it kills you! You think I’m going to let him do this to you?” she yelled at Grant. “Taking you out and getting you drunk and fucking nigger wenches! Just so he won’t have to take you diving! How do you know what you could catch! You’re paying for this shitty trip, and I’m going to see you get your money’s worth! You!” she screamed at Bonham, “get out of that goddam fucking bed! I mean it!” She advanced on him, still swinging Grant’s knife.

  Bonham had begun to come awake now. “Here, here, now,” he said sitting with his back against the headboard and looking as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or not. Carol Abernathy came right on toward his bed.

  “You think I won’t use it? I’ll slice you to goddam shreds!”

  Bonham stared at her. Then suddenly he threw back the sheet and, for a man of his bulk, skipped with incredible lightness out of the bed on the side away from her. From somewhere within him there emanated a peculiar sound which the still astonished Grant could only describe as a giggle, a bass giggle.