Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  At least a million times Grant asked himself why in the name of God he was doing this, when he didn’t have to. The only answer he could find was that, afterwards, he would be able to say with petty ego-pride that he had. Brag to people that he had done it.

  Sometimes Bonham talked. But not much. He told Grant about his ol’ shark hole, and how sometimes in certain moods he liked to go out there and shoot a shark or two, and asked if Grant would like to go with him one day and shoot one himself. Grant said that he would, but he had no intention of doing so. Not this trip. Perhaps on some future trip. Or when they made the maiden voyage of the Naiad. But not this time. Grant’s nerve was completely gone.

  It wasn’t far from here actually, Bonham added, and in fact had been responsible for his having found the wreck, one day when he was out around here alone looking for shark. Grant had not seen a single shark since they began the salvage operation, and thought unhappily: So now he tells me!

  He never did see one. In all they worked nine full days on the operation, before a cold front from Florida and the Gulf Coast came down bringing weather with it forcing them to quit. They had brought up two cannon the first day, two the second, taken three days for the fifth, three days for the sixth, and on the ninth day, after getting lucky, brought up a seventh cannon which, tipped steeply downward so that only its cascabel and part of its breech showed above the sand and which they thought would be difficult, proved to be attached to coral only by its mouth, and was easy to break loose once they got down to it. Then, on the morning of the tenth day, after they had made the First Dive and begun work on another, difficult cannon and were resting and waiting out the Surface Interval Time, a handsome-looking Bermuda-rigged sailing vessel hove into view in the northwest and ran down on them sailing close hauled into the freshening breeze, quite far ahead of the weather whose head was just beginning to show on the far horizon and heading for GaBay harbor. “By God!” Bonham exclaimed when it got a little closer, and jumped up excitedly. “That’s Orloffski and his cutter! But what the hell’s he doin comin in from the west?”

  It was indeed Orloffski. The vessel came on, heeling well over, until they could make out the two men on board, Orloffski at the wheel and another man forward holding onto and leaning on the mast. Orloffski gave them a happy grin and a wave. But then Bonham leaped up on the winch head and spread out his huge arms and bellowed. Recognizing him Orloffski, suprised, jumped up behind the wheel and gave him another, now delighted, more intimate wave, then motioned vigorously with his free hand and pointed in toward the port. Then the sleek cutter was gone, on past them, running on in.

  “Come on!” Bonham said, jumping down and coming forward. “Let’s wrap this up, here. This is a big day!”

  They did not dive that afternoon, and it was the last time Grant was ever to see the wreck site. If he had known that, he might have looked it all over a little more carefully for memories and suitable sentiments before leaving it. He had become very close to Bonham the past ten days, as men almost must who have worked together on a potentially dangerous project amicably, and like almost all pupils whose teachers take an interest in them and in teaching them well, his respect, love and hero-worship had increased. He wished Lucky didn’t dislike him so much.

  Back in the harbor the cutter had dropped sail and anchored in a protected spot in the bay instead of pulling into the Yacht Club. Orloffski and his friend (who had come down just expressly for the sail and the chance to look around Jamaica for a few days) were busy battening everything down and cleaning up when they came on board from a skiff. Both were anxious to get on shore and away from the little ship. It was indeed Orloffski, and for the first time since he had met him Grant felt some liking for him. He was still excited by his trip, and by the prospect of making final landfall, and was talkative and high.

  He had had to decide in Miami, when news of impending weather came, whether to go down through the Bahamas, or to sit the weather out in Miami. If he did that, he would almost certainly have to hang around Miami for at least two weeks, maybe more. The new front forming over the Aleutians should take three to five days to work down to the Gulf Coast and the Mexican mainland, so that gave him about a week’s head start. He had crossed The Stream that night and then followed the classic route: through the Providence Channels, headed southeast, passing Eleuthera and Cat Island to starboard, further south to thread the Crooked Island Passage, then southeast again to Matthewtown in Great Inagua, where they stopped just long enough to take on stores, and from there on out into the Windward Passage and the strongest Trades. They had pulled out of Matthewtown at 3:30 in the morning and, he calculated, made just about 180 sea miles in the first twenty-four hours’ run. When he took his morning sight at 10 A.M. he figured they were only sixty miles or so from Ganado Bay. That was the mistake. When he brought her in to sight Jamaica, they had run west as far as Discovery Bay. That was why when they sighted Bonham and the winch boat they were beating back in from the west. “Those fucking Trades, man! They really move you along! But except for that it worked out perfect! That weather won’t get here till tomorrow or the day after!”

  “Tomorrow,” Bonham said.

  “Yeah? Well, I tell you this,” Orloffski said, “I hope I don’t have to look at the Lazy Jane for a couple of weeks.”

  He was understandably proud of himself. Later Bonham explained to Grant that he was really not that adequate a sailor for a trip like that, not ahead of that weather. And as a navigator, he didn’t know his ass from third base; witness that screwed-up morning sight! But it had worked. “Well it’s good to see you you son of a bitch!” Orloffski said again and punched Bonham on the arm. “It’s good to see you you bastard!” Bonham said and caught him in the belly, “you never will learn to keep that guard up, will you?” They all rowed in together, and Bonham explained about Grant putting up the money and coming into the company. “Yeah? That’s great,” Orloffski said. “Sure, I’ll give ’im five percent a my share. How’s my old lady?”

  “Just fine,” Bonham said. “Why?”

  “Because she better prepare for some heavy fucking, that’s why,” Orloffski said. “I ain’t even seen a cunt since I left Miami. How long does this weather usually last down here like that?”

  Bonham squinted at the sky in the west. “Five days.”

  A cold front coming down from the north usually caused from five to seven days of weather, he explained, bringing with it lots of cold rain, squalls and sufficiently high winds to cause seas high enough to stop all sport fishing, and certainly it would not allow any diving. All of them looked at the west for a moment, with that awe and respect for the sea all men acquire who have ever seen the sea angry.

  This particular cold front lasted exactly six days, but when it ended and passed on south and east so the diving could resume, Grant was not there to see it clear, nor was Lucky.

  27

  WHEN HE THOUGHT it all over later on, as he did and was to do many many times, he came finally to the conclusion that it was his proximity, his actual physical presence around the villa during the spell of weather when they could not dive, that caused the breaking down of everything and Carol Abernathy’s final blowup. Which of course, in turn, necessitated his telling Lucky, finally, about his old (old?) affair with Carol. One could—it would certainly be easy to—declare that it had all been inevitable from the beginning, that this particular development of all their mutual histories had been included and totally contained in all courses of future action from the moment that he called Lucky up the day after their first disastrous date. Especially if you were a fatalist.

  Yet Grant tended to think that if the storm, the southward-moving cold front, had not come along to disrupt their diving leaving him free to hang around the place and be under foot and visible, it might not have happened. Cerainly after that first afternoon Carol Abernathy had not caused any more trouble all those days that he was out with Bonham. But probably that was wishful thinking. He did not know what Lucky thought. S
ince it happened, he had not felt with her that sense of being one personality, the two separate eyes of one head, and no longer exactly knew what she felt and thought. But he could see no innate necessity, no absolute logic, which inevitably demanded such a total confrontation.

  But if not, what kind of sense did that make? Just that a storm came, and at a certain time, was all. Or, in other words, no sense at all.

  They had not even seen much of Carol or the rest, really. More than when he was diving, certainly; but not all that much more. The first two days of the storm after they suspended diving he had been content just to lie around the Cottage and loaf, swim a little bit in the safe pool, and try at least partially to refill the receptacle of his courage which had been flat empty now so long. Evelyn had one of those quick-drying tennis courts, and in the afternoons between the driving rain squalls that lashed the tropical foliage he and Lucky essayed a few sets of tennis—rather comically, since neither was anywhere near a good player. Once Carol came down with Hunt and Evelyn to watch them. She and Hunt had never played, and Evelyn hadn’t played for years. Everything had been perfectly charming then. On both of those nights they had taken dinner up at the great house at Evelyn’s invitation. Lucky was so glad to have him back from the diving that it lent everything a festive air. There was no reason to think everything would not go on being all right until they finished bringing up the cannon and then left for New York. The cold front storm would only push it back a week or so, that was all. And Grant had a private reason for thinking everything would be all right.

  On one of the mornings when they were still diving, as he left the Cottage about seven-thirty, he had found Carol waiting for him on the end of the terrace at the point where he had to cross it to get to the garages. He had tried very carefully to avoid seeing her alone, and now she had gotten up early to confront him at a point she knew he would have to pass. He waved at her and grinned and went on, deliberately not slackening his pace.

  “Ron!” she had called. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Yeah? What about?” He let his reluctance show as he stopped and turned, and made his face and eyes very cold. He felt cold.

  “About several things,” Carol Abernathy said. “Have you five minutes? One thing is I want to talk to you about this girl.”

  “You haven’t got anything to say to me about Lucky that would interest me.”

  “Oh, but I have. I’ve been checking up on her. I’ve got some friends who live in Syracuse, and when you left with her for Kingston, I wrote to them about her. That was before you were married,” she added, as if explaining she would not have done it afterwards. “They know her and her family very well and for a long time, and they wrote me some pretty terrible things. I think you ought to know about them. For one thing that Italian family of hers are all hoodlums and gangsters and have been since the days of Prohibition.”

  “I know about all that,” he said grimly, “and it’s not like you say.” If he had been cold, he was now furious.

  ”Another thing they wrote me is that all those years she lived in New York she was little better than a whore.”

  “Well?” Grant said. “So what?”

  “Well, don’t you see what all this means?” Carol said. She smiled and stepped back. “How can she have any integrity? I think you ought to know about these things.”

  “I do. I know all about that too. Now let me tell you something. You don’t seem to understand that Lucky and I are married. Man and wife, like you and Hunt are man and wife. I love her and she’s madly in love with me. I haven’t loved you for a long time, for years and years. But apart from all that we are married, legally and everything. In the eyes of God and Society. That changes a lot of things. It changes everything. And there’s nothing you or anybody can do about it. I can’t do anything about it. And you better get used to that.”

  “Another thing I wanted to talk to you about was your work,” Carol Abernathy said. “All this other, all the rest, all this diving, even your getting married, is all unimportant alongside of your work. When are you going to get back to work?”

  “When I feel like it. And that’s not now. Another thing you should understand is that now that I’m married you no longer even have any right to ask me about my work. That’s my wife’s job. From now on I’m going to run my own career.” It was cruel, but he had to do it. More, he wanted to do it. Because she had had no business starting this. Strangely enough, she did not answer this either, any more than she had his first rebuttal.

  “The other thing is Bonham. He’s just taking you for every nickel he can get out of you, selling you things you don’t need, not even teaching you well. I made a mistake when I first introduced you to him.”

  “I’ll take care of that, too,” he said flatly. “It’s no longer any of your business. Now let me explain something else. The only reason I came up here with Lucky is because I’m trying to protect your reputation, yours and Hunt’s. That Time-guy I met down in Kingston, and apparently a lot of others, about two-thirds of New York to be exact, seem to believe that you and I were lovers. So you only have two choices. You can be a nice girl and shut up and protect yourself, or you can keep on doing things like this. Don’t forget we may very well have to be living across the street from you in Indianapolis. How do you think it would look if we moved out of here right now? And went and stayed with Bonham? Or better yet moved into the West Moon Over?”

  “Not very good,” Carol said, “of course.”

  “Especially if that local Kingston Time-guy you saw left some local paid spies to keep an eye on all of us. They’d all love to do something with this story. Well, those are your two choices.”

  She did not answer him and only stood, leaning forward from her lower back in that peculiar prissy way she had, her eyes wide and listening, a little sad half-smile playing about her face.

  “Have you told Lucky about us?” she asked.

  “That’s none of your business. But, no. I haven’t. Not yet.”

  “I hope you won’t,” Carol said.

  “That’s for me to decide.”

  “Because the less people who know about it, the less—”

  “I said that’s for me to decide,” he said.

  Carol Abernathy said nothing.

  “Well, see you later on,” Grant said, offhand, and walked away. It was the last conversation he had with her.

  So he had been reasonably sure that everything would go all right, at least until they left here anyway. Then on the third day of the storm he had gone to town to see Bonham, about the weather and the job.

  It didn’t rain all the time during the week of cold-front storm, and that particular day at that particular moment was beautifully fair. The rains had cooled everything off and laid the dust in the town although they made the air humid and very muggy, and from up on the hill you could look out to sea and see groups of large dark clouds marching southeastward in stately anger, and the slanting blue lines of rain squalls dotted the ocean’s surface. Bonham loafing in his shop with Orloffski (Orloffski’s sailing buddy had taken the bus down to Kingston) said it would take three days after the front moved on for the seas to calm sufficiently to hope to dive. When Grant got back to the villa and walked down to the Cottage, Lucky told him what had happened.

  It had rained up on the hill while he was in town although it hadn’t rained in town, and in the midst of the slashing rainstorm Carol Abernathy had appeared at the door of the Cottage wearing Hunt’s trenchcoat which was almost too small for her and a pair of raveled old sneakers without socks. Her close-cropped hair with its not unbecoming streaks of gray was plastered to her skull, and she was in a fury. She had come for her suitcases, she said. If Ron Grant was big enough, old enough and mature enough to get married and assume the responsibility of a wife and family, he was also big enough, old enough and mature enough to buy and use his own goddamned suitcases instead of hers, and she wanted them, she raged, and she wanted them right here and now. Lucky, who was all alone w
ith Mary-Martha (who was terrified), had no idea of what could have set her off. “Are they her suitcases?” she asked.

  Grant thought about this and then had to go and look. “As a matter of fact they are,” he said, coming back. “I bought them for her. They’re the same two I had in New York. But I don’t know what she’s hollering about, nobody in our—nobody in our family ever paid any attention to what suitcases he grabbed when he went on a trip.” Obviously, he added, Lucky had not given them to her.

  No, she said, she hadn’t. She had told her they were not hers to give and she would have to wait until Grant came back and talk to him, whereupon Carol had said she would take them by force, then. “No, you won’t,” Lucky had said. She had treated her like a disobedient child. “Look, Carol, you don’t want to fight me over a couple of suitcases. Ron will be back in an hour or so. If they’re yours, he’ll give them to you. Come on and sit down and have a drink with me and wait for him.” At this Carol Abernathy had sat down on the nearest couch and begun to cry.

  Lucky had been scared to death, her belly was full of flutterings, but she did not intend to be intimidated either. But when the older woman began to weep she had gone over and put her arms around her, remembering always to treat her like a child. She had read that somewhere. And at this Carol Abernathy had begun to talk. Incoherently and in broken phrases she said that she had always tried to help Ron, that she had always believed he was a great talent, but now that was Lucky’s job. She was passing her the torch. It was a tremendous responsibility.