Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  “Why didn’t you wake me up last night?” he asked calmly, conversationally, at the bottom of the stairs. Ben and Irma were waving at them from the pool. They had called this morning the moment they had got in.

  “You were so beat, poor darling,” Lucky said. “I just thought I’d let you sleep. You looked so really beat.”

  That much was certainly true enough. He had been beat. He had run out of guts again, run out of courage, run out of nerve. It was the bottle with the tiny hole in the bottom all over again, and he had watched his courage-level sink in it again day by day. It had taken every absolute ounce of nerve he had, plus all the beer, to go shark-shooting yesterday. Go shark-shooting deliberately. Why had he done it? Why did Jim do it? Why did Jim like to do it? He had hated it. Afterwards of course he had loved it, loved having done it, loved the stir it made when they anchored off the hotel and hauled the big shark ashore. It had looked really monstrous. Eleven feet, ten inches, give or take a couple inches gained or lost in the measuring. You could with all honesty call it a twelve-footer. And it had been so easy to kill. The problem was to catch it, not to run away from it. After it had come in to the blood spoor and started circling and nosing around, they had had to actually chase it, to get the Brazilian-rig spear into it! But he knew damn well all sharks weren’t like that. They were almost at the pool by now, Ben and Irma were getting up, grinning and waiting to say hello after their absence. Why couldn’t they have stayed around? They’d said they’d wanted to help, hadn’t they? God damn them. He grinned and stuck out his hand and said nothing further to Lucky.

  But he watched closely all through lunch. Jim was there of course, and of course ate with them, as usual. The catamaran was still anchored off the hotel beach on the still calm sea, where they had left it yesterday when they’d swum the dead shark in. The shark itself had already been taken away, by Jim. Maybe he’d sold it. For the liver. Jim seemed, as far as he could tell, exactly as he had seemed yesterday. He got up and smiled his smile and shook hands with Lucky as he always did. Grant avoided shaking hands with him, but without making it at all obvious. When they told him they wouldn’t be going out today, Lucky added in her normal voice with a sweet smile at Grant, “We’ve got an engagement this afternoon. That we just have to keep.”

  “Yesterday make you a little nervous, hunh?” Jim grinned at Grant.

  “I have to admit that it did,” Grant said. “In spite of all the beer I drank. But I guess I’d still go today. Except that we have this appointment we can’t break.” He smiled lovingly at Lucky. He was determined, certainly at least around Jim Grointon, not to show, not to let on, not even in the faintest way indicate, that he had any suspicions about last night. Good God! he thought suddenly. Poor Hunt Abernathy! But then, that had all been different. Watch as he might, he could not throughout the normally long lunch find any symptoms, any look, any indication at all of anything in either Jim or Lucky. Christ, if it was true, what would he do? Beat him up? He thought he probably could. What could he do? Beat her up? And what good would any of that do? Why did Americans take this thing of being cuckold so much more seriously and as so much more unmanning than Europeans did? Europeans didn’t even care, didn’t even give a damn. Or so people said. Europeans just went out and got themselves a girl. Or so people said. Immediately after the lunch the two of them retired.

  They did everything. Just about everything two human beings could do together sexually, assuming that one of them was a male and that the other one was a female, they did that afternoon. And they spent the entire afternoon at it. Not even in the early days of their love affair in New York had they ever made love any more passionately, furiously, tenderly, lovingly, rupturingly, than they did this afternoon. And in most of the new things Lucky was the instigator, the aggressor. Grant had always been too shy. It was Grant’s dream of what a love affair—of what all love affairs for all people everywhere —ought to be like. And yet deep in his mind his suspicions of her, of Lucky, of his wife, were not allayed. Could she do a thing like that to him? Could she? And then be like this?

  “Why did you suddenly change so suddenly?” he asked once when they were resting between bouts on the bed. Lucky was lying nude in the bed beside him and fingering his chest. Suddenly he had a mental picture of another man lying here with her, doing all these things with her, that they had been doing. The man in the picture was faceless, but he appeared to be built suspiciously like Jim Grointon. “I mean, yesterday you were still furious at me. What caused you to change?”

  “I just decided it had gone far enough,” Lucky said lightly. “I just realized that it could really wreck our marriage. And I find I don’t want our marriage wrecked.”

  You don’t, hunh? was what Grant thought. But what was it suddenly made you find that out, hunh?

  “You’re quite a man, you know,” Lucky said lightly. “Not only in the sack, a good lover. But in other ways. I realize you had serious integrity problems. With all that Carol Abernathy business. I accept that you had to take me up there. I wish you hadn’t had to. I wish you hadn’t lied to me. I wish most of all you hadn’t actually fucked that dirty old woman, after me.”

  “I tried to explain about that,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “So instead you hurt me,” Lucky said lightly. “But it’s all over. I’m willing to forget it. It’s under the bridge. And I find that I do need you, darling. Darling Ron.” She began to tickle him where it counted.

  Grant said nothing. The thought of it, of that other, faceless, man, was more than he could bear to think about. Had Hunt Abernathy ever thought like that? But Hunt and Carol hadn’t been making love for years by that time. After a moment he began to tickle Lucky where it counted, too. How, why, when did she suddenly discover so suddenly that she needed him? was what he was thinking and asking himself.

  He watched again, all through dinner (at which Jim Grointon ate again with them, at Grant’s own express invitation; he would have died rather than not invite him), and he watched all through the drinking and fun and talking in the bar that followed after dinner. He could not find one single look, or glance, not one innuendo, that he could point to, use to prove to himself that she—that she and Jim—were lying to him, living a lie out for him. Ben and Irma, who ate with them of course, were both visibly relieved and elated over their so sudden making up, becoming again the early lovers they had known. Not one thing could he find.

  It had to come out. Later he would wonder just why it had to come out. But at the time there was no wondering. His manhood was affected here and he had to find out. After all of it, though, he did not find out.

  He waited until they had retired for the night. After Lucky had crawled over into his bed beside him, nude, and lay hugging him (almost desperately, it seemed to Grant), he brought it up again.

  “I still don’t understand why you didn’t wake me up last night,” he said.

  “I told you all that, darling,” Lucky murmured against his shoulder.

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” Grant persisted. “It just doesn’t make sense, unless of course you wanted to be alone with Jim Grointon.”

  Lucky pulled away from him and half sat up. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “What would I want to be alone with Jim Grointon for?”

  “What for? For Christ’s sake, the other night you asked me pointblank, outright, if I wanted you to have an affair with him, didn’t you?”

  Lucky’s voice was now no longer soft, or loving. “Only because you embarrassed me by saying, right in front of him and in front of me, in front of everybody, that he was in love with me.”

  “Well, he was. Is.”

  “Yes,” Lucky said. “He is. And I’ll tell you one thing: he asked me to leave you and marry him. Are you trying to imply that you think I slept with him last night?”

  “No, but you could have. I’m asking you did you.”

  “Do you think I could do something like that to y
ou, and right here in your own house?”

  “Yes, I think you might have. You’ve been furious with me since I told you about Carol Abernathy. You might have done it to get even. And you could have gone out. Out somewhere with him. I would never have known.” The picture of that faceless man and Lucky together nude, nude and doing things together, would not go out of his head.

  “Do you think I could do something like that with him, and then be with you the way I’ve been today?”

  “Yes, I think you might. If you found it wasn’t very good, and found you were still in love with me after all, and then were guilty and afraid. Yes, I think that.”

  “I think you’re crazy,” Lucky said coldly. “I think you want me to fuck Jim Grointon. I think you’re some kind of crazy half fag.”

  “You already told me he asked you to marry him,” Grant said just as coldly. “What did you say to him?”

  “I told him no. That I was in love with my husband.”

  “All I’m asking is that you tell me that you didn’t fuck him last night, that’s all.”

  “All right. I will No! No, I didn’t fuck him last night, or any other time. And furthermore do you think I would ever admit it to you if I did? The answer is no, I didn’t fuck him. Okay?”

  “Then how do I know you’re not lying?”

  “You don’t. You don’t, do you? You just don’t. All you have is my word for it, and that’s all you’re ever going to get. Ha, ha, you son of a bitch. No, I didn’t do it. Okay?”

  “I could ask him,” Grant heard himself say.

  “He wouldn’t tell you either,” Lucky said. “If he had.”

  “If I thought you had.” Grant began.

  “What would you do? And I’ll tell you something else, Mister Smart-Ass, Mister Smart-Ass-Fag,—because I swear I think you are—I’ll tell you something else.” She had gotten out of bed by now, and had put on her robe, and was calmly and coldly tying its thick corded belt around her. “I’ll tell you something else. I’m not going on your goddamned crazy cruise with you. I happen to still be in love with you, and never mind how or why, and I’m not at all sure that you deserve for me to be in love with. But I am. But I’m not going on your crazy cruise with you, in a boat that’s uninsurable. I’ll go back to New York and wait for you; or I’ll stay here and wait for you (but I know you wouldn’t want that); or I’ll go to Ganado Bay and wait for you in a hotel; I’ll even go to Miami and wait for you there in a hotel. But I’m not going on your fucking cruise.”

  “You’re going on that cruise,” Grant said. “You’re my wife, and you’re going on that cruise with me. Or else.”

  “Or else what?”

  “Or else you won’t be my wife anymore. It’s as simple as that. I’ll just be long-gone. And you’ll never see me again. And you won’t collect a fucking nickel off me either. I’ll go to jail first.”

  Lucky stood staring at him a long time, her fine Italian nostrils flaring and flattening as she breathed deeply over and over. “All right, I’ll go,” she said finally, in a thin hard voice. “But you better get us the fuck out of here, and fast.”

  “You’re warning me?” Grant said coldly.

  “Yes. Get Bonham off of fucking Cathie Chandler—Cathie Finer—and get him to get his damned boat ready. I want to get out of here and fast. I can’t stand this place and I can’t stand these people. They’re all sick. Except René and Lisa. I am warning you. Get moving. Or maybe I’ll leave you.”

  “I hear you,” Grant said. “How did you know Bonham was fucking Cathie Finer?”

  “How did you know it yourself? I’ve got eyes too. I’ll tell you something else. You used to fuck her yourself. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did as a matter of fact,” Grant said and grinned. He could feel it was not a pleasant grin. “A long, long time ago. You’re complaining? You?”

  “No,” she said, and grinned herself, an equally unpleasant one. “I’m not complaining. I’m just pointing it out to you that I’m not the stupid broad you think I am.”

  “I don’t think you’re a stupid broad,” Grant said thinly, “far, far from it.”

  ”And just what do you mean by that?”

  “Take it any way you like,” he said.

  “And I’m telling you once again. No, I didn’t fuck Jim Grointon! And that’s all I’ll ever tell you: No. No, I didn’t fuck Jim Grointon.”

  “I hear you,” Grant said, and rolled over.

  That ended it for that night. And he still didn’t know. Maybe he would never know. What a thought. But the next morning, early, while Lucky slept on obliviously and once again back in her own big bed, Grant was up early and downstairs, where he called Bonham at the boat yard.

  “I want to see you, Al,” he said authoritatively, “and I want to see you right now. Here.”

  “Hey, hey,” Bonham said calmly from the other end. “What’s up?”

  “You may not have any goddamn cruise, that’s what’s up. And if you don’t have any cruise, you don’t have any mortgage from me, that’s what’s up. Now damn well get in here.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the phone, it seemed to go on and on. “All right,” Bonham said calmly, finally. “I’ll be right there.”

  When he arrived, in his paint-spattered working clothes, Grant took him into the deserted bar for a morning drink.

  “I don’t know what’s up with you,” he said, “and it’s none of my business—”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’s up with me’?”

  “With you and Cathie Finer, that’s what I mean. But that’s none of my business. What is my business is that you’re not getting the schooner ready, and you should be. If the schooner isn’t ready to pull out of here by tomorrow or next day at the very latest, I’m pulling out of here for New York. And if I pull out of here, Ben and Irma will pull out of here with me. And all you’ll have left of your cruise is your surgeon friend and Cathie Finer.” At the very last moment he decided, he did not quite know why, not to mention the threat of the mortgage again.

  Bonham stared at him, rather coolly Grant thought, for a long moment. Then he took a slow drink from his glass. Grant had never spoken to him this way before, and it was clear to Grant that it was unexpected. “It must be pretty important,” Bonham said coolly, “whatever it is, to make you suddenly decide to leave like this so quick.”

  “Why I want to leave is my business and nobody else’s,” Grant said, and watched Bonham’s level cool look turn into a shrewdly speculative one, but he went right on. “You’ve been neglecting getting that work done on the ship, I think. For whatever reasons of your own. If we can’t leave here day after tomorrow at the latest, I’m through. Don’t forget, I’ve got play rehearsals I’ve got to look after in New York,” he added, just to confuse.

  Bonham waited again, coolly, a long time before he answered. He took another slow thoughtful swallow of his drink. Grant had never spoken to him so. Up to now Grant had always deferred to him. Sam the bartender had tactfully faded away out of earshot. When Bonham did finally speak, it was in a voice of decision. Of cool decision. “All right We can leave here tomorrow. But late. We’ll leave at dusk, just before dusk, and make it a night sail. We should make the Nelson by 2:30 P.M. the next day and we can look Georgetown over and start diving that afternoon. Is that okay? That okay by you?”

  “That’s fine,” Grant said crisply. “But I wish you’d said that two days ago.” He added hastily, “Or three.” Then added again, to further confuse, “Or four.”

  Bonham looked at him again for a long time. “We’ve had a lot more interior work to do than I expected.”

  “I don’t care,” Grant said. “As long as we can get out of here according to the way you’ve just said.”

  “We can,” Bonham said. “Is that all you wanted to talk about? I better be gettin back to the ship.”

  “Yes, that’s all. So long, Al,” Grant said, relenting a little. Bonham did not seem to accept this yielding.— “See yo
u later on,” he said laconically.

  What auspices to be starting a week or ten days’ cruise under! And in close quarters yet! Hell, he thought suddenly, they couldn’t even make it ten days now, if that surgeon had to be back in GaBay on the eleventh. What must that Bonham be thinking about? Grant had himself another drink and then went back upstairs where he found Lucky up and just dressing. There didn’t seem to be much to talk about, so he didn’t talk.— “No, I didn’t fuck Jim Grointon!” Lucky said, bitterly. —“We’re leaving tomorrow evening for the Nelsons,” Grant countered.— “At night!” Lucky said. “A night cruise, or sailing, or whatever they call it? Jesus! And on that old uninsurable tub! With all those big freighters and ships all out there?”— “Bonham knows his business,” Grant said shortly.— “God! I hope he does. I sure hope he does,” Lucky said viciously. But when they went downstairs to see the others she suddenly became her old loving self of yesterday again with him. She sat by him, she clung onto him, she kept touching him. Lucky had changed again. This was not like last night, and not like those days and nights before. She had just changed again, that was all. Why? The image of the faceless man and her rose up again. What if she had really done it? What would he do? What could he do?

  He insisted on going out in the catamaran again that afternoon after lunch. Ben and Irma, when they learned departure was tomorrow night, did not want to go out and wanted to stay in instead and work on their packing, choosing what to take, what to send on ahead back to New York, since Naiad would not come back here. They had bought a lot of stuff down here. So once again it was the three of them, the three of them alone, himself and Lucky and Jim, out on the boat. And once again they went down to the place near Morant Bay, shark-fishing, although this time, though they put out good bloody baitfish and the same outgoing tide had hardly changed but a few minutes since two days ago, they saw nary a single shark. In spite of that it seemed to Grant, the whole thing, crazily, as if it were some perpetual experience he might have to go through forever, some perennial penance, like Sisyphus and the rock, that he would never again be released from: himself and Lucky and Jim, only just the three of them alone on the boat, going down near Morant Bay, shark-fishing.