He had been caught red-handed lumbering off into the darkness hugging the penultimate keg of beer to his chest. His explanation that it was just a nightcap seemed feeble.
Enough cars had left the parking lot to provide a clear space. A group of experts watched the proceedings narrowly. Lew’s coordination was blurred by shine. He took the ankles and Marty took the wrists. They swung him three times and let go the fourth time. Their grunt of final effort mingled with Shed’s howl of alarm. He turned in the air and landed so thunderously on the seat of his baggy pants that it bounced him neatly back onto his feet. After his moment of surprise, he turned and bowed, and then walked with a certain dignity to his cab and went to sleep in the back seat. It was agreed that they had done exceptionally well with so large a man.
It was at about this time that Alice Stebbins went to bed. Unlike other years, she had no heart for the festivities. She was tired of having people tell her, with all the ponderous emotionality of alcohol, how sorry they were. The more volatile had dampened her blouse with their tears.
The bright lights on the docks made unfamiliar patterns on the ceiling. The sounds of party came through the window screens. The music was not as loud. There were unidentifiable yelps and whinnies. One dogged group was trying to sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” In spite of their most determined efforts to sing it as a round, they kept getting mixed up and finishing all together. Then there would be a loud, angry, vicious argument about whose fault it was before they started again.
A stranger, walking by below her window said, “… so she says you don’t like the way I gaffed your damn fish and I said no the way you did it I could have lost it and she said if that’s the way you want to be about it I quit and before I could grab her she throws overboard the gaff, the fish, the rod and reel, the mop, the boat hook and the Goddamn lunch and then she says take me home, for Chrissake, and starts crying …”
Suddenly she heard the familiar, ponderous creaking of the stairs, like a trained bear climbing a stepladder, and she smiled in the darkness. Gus fumbled his way into the apartment, and in a whisper like cracking a steam valve, said, “Alice! You here?
“Was unlock down there,” he whispered. “Not safe for you. Any dronk bum could come in, yes?”
In a little while he came into the bed beside her. It dipped under his weight. He sighed heavily. When she was in his arms it took her a few moments to identify the odd little sounds he was making. She touched his eye-lids with her fingertips and said, “Why, you’re crying, you big boobie. Now … now you’ve got me doing it too.”
He held her, snuffled against her throat, “So damn lonesome all of a sudden,” he mumbled. “Is no good at all.”
At midnight, due to a serious underestimation of the amount of beer required, the tent bar was forced to close. Every scrap of food was gone. Those who had left bottles with the bartenders reclaimed them, some quarreling bitterly about the meager amount left. The rule about carrying bottles around on the person was relaxed to compensate for the new conditions.
Also at midnight, as Orbie was standing near the Lullaby talking to Sim and Gloria Gallowell, they heard a thin and frantic male voice yelling, “Help! Help!” It came from over by charterboat row. The yells were smothered by distant sounds of conflict.
Orbie said, “You know, that could be that fella that give Darlene Marie the boost with that buzz stick.”
“Could be at that,” Sim said. “Made himself unpopular with the boys, doing a thing like that. Funny they took so long to get him.”
“I heard a while back they were having a time getting him off Sid’s boat.”
“You’d better do something!” Gloria said. “He isn’t real strong looking. They could kill him over there.”
“I guess we’re just about to,” Sim said. “Aren’t we just about to, Orbie?”
“Let’s just amble on over there.”
“Don’t you start to fighting, honey,” Gloria said.
“You just wait right here where it’s nice and light. We’ll take care of this and then we’ll all go on home. Where’s Marty and Mary Lee.”
“I guess they’re still on that Texas boat, honey. That party is getting bigger and bigger. Hurry before they kill that poor man. Please hurry!”
Orbie and Sim headed toward the disturbance, walking without particular haste. When they were fifty feet away, somebody grabbed Orbie’s arm from behind and whirled him so violently that Orbie came dangerously close to belting Jack Engly in the face.
“Where’s Judy?” Jack demanded. “You seen Judy?”
“No, I haven’t seen her for a long time.”
“Me either,” Sim said.
“I kinda dozed off sitting aboard my boat and she was there and then she wasn’t. You see her, you tell her I’m looking for her.”
The sound of battle had stopped. Sim and Orbie joined the group of half a dozen protectors of Southern womanhood. They were standing looking down at Lonnie Guy, one of them squatting beside him, holding a match. Lonnie was a mess. An argument was going on. Two men felt they hadn’t been given a chance at him. The others, honor satisfied, were worried about overdoing it.
“All right, all right,” Sim said. “Somebody go draw a bucket. Is he breathing, Mike?”
“A little bit, now and again, Sim.”
After the second slosh with a bucket of salt water, Lonnie groaned and rolled over. Sim and Orbie picked him up, each holding him by an arm, and walked him back toward the Pieces of Seven, followed for half the distance by two men pleading for just one little chop more. Lonnie’s chin bobbed on his chest. His nose lay neatly against his right cheek. His legs flapped loosely in his attempt to walk, and he dribbled a few tooth fragments.
“Sure messed him,” Sim said.
“Be a good idea to get a doctor. They can call. Sid’s got a phone strung onto that Chris of his.”
Gloria was where they had left her. She had been joined by Leo and Christy. Lonnie was walking a little better, but he didn’t look any better. “We’ll unload him and be right back, kids,” Orbie said.
They used the little portable ladderway on the port side of the Pieces of Seven to walk him aboard. Francesca Portoni came charging up to them, black hair whipping, black eyes flashing, cinematic bosom heaving. “What ees thees!”
“It’s a prominent figger in the entertainment world,” Orbie said. “Where’s Sid?”
She made a sweeping gesture that nearly tipped her off her bare feet. “Pass out. Everybody ees pass out, total. I am so bore. Ees a big mess all over.” She paused and looked more closely at Lonnie Guy. “Sangre de la Madonna!” she said in an awed tone.
She told them where to put him. She was phoning a doctor when they left.
Joe Rykler had heard the sounds of combat, and though they were nearby, they seemed vastly unimportant to him. He was more concerned with listening to himself and trying to figure out what he was saying. He was on his back on something that had a rubbery softness. He was looking up at the stars. There was a woman in the curve of his right arm. Just beyond her, a sonorous, carefully articulated male voice said, “Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire.”
Joe stopped listening to his own sad fuzzy voice and hiked himself up just long enough to orient himself before the woman yanked him back down. He was over in charterboat row, on some kind of big bulbous rubberized air mattress on the bow deck of the Fleetermouse.
“Whassamarra, honey?” the woman said.
“Who are you?”
“There you go again,” she said petulantly. “Can’t you keep track. Alla time you gotta be clued. You muss be drunk. I’m Beezie, baby. Ole Beezie Hooper.”
“Oh.”
“New Jersey, New Mexico, New York,” the man just beyond her said. She lay between them.
“Who’s that?”
“I tole you ninety times, Joey. Sa house guest me and Stan. Peter. He says the states to make sure he’s not stinking. Then the pres’dents, and finally the atomic table, but he never gets all t
he way through. Talk sad some more. I wanna cry some more.” She rolled against him and began to chomp at the lower half of his face like a person trying to eat an apple. Joe found it unpleasant.
“North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio,” the man said.
Joe pushed her away and said, “Where’s Stan?”
“Piffle on him. Sour, dirry ole louse. It’s you and me against all of ’um. Make me cry.”
“Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania.” He could hear a dull mumbling of voices from the cockpit of the boat, identified it as a semi-comprehensible political argument.
Then a voice was calling. “Joe! Joe Rykler!” He sensed urgency in the voice. He recognized Amy Penworthy’s voice. He sat up. Beezie yanked him down so hard he bounced. He pushed her away and scrambled up, lost his footing and nearly pitched overboard.
“Come back here, you moron!” Beezie yelled.
He went gingerly down the side deck, stepped over onto the narrow access dock and walked ashore. His legs felt unreliable.
“Amy?”
She came up to him and said in a low voice, “I’ve been looking all over. Are you drunk?”
“You’ve been looking for me to ask me that?”
“You don’t seem too bad, I guess. It’s Anne.”
Something went on in his head, like rolling up a gauze screen that separated the audience from the action on the stage.
“What about Anne?”
“You’re hurting my arm. About half an hour ago I went aboard the Alrightee. She was packing a bag. She was tight and she was crying. I asked her what she was doing. She said she was going on a cruise on that Texas boat. They invited her, she said. She said she’d be gone for weeks and weeks. I couldn’t do anything with her. I asked her why she was doing such a crazy thing and she said so you could stop being in love with her, and she said she wasn’t any damn good and it was time to prove it. I don’t know what to do, and I thought …”
Then he was taking long strides, and Amy was trotting along behind him. He was consciously taking deep breaths in an effort to clear his head completely.
Suddenly a tall figure blocked his path. “You seen Judy?” Jack Engly demanded.
“Get out of the way!”
“I want to know, you seen Judy.”
“No. No, I haven’t seen Judy.”
He walked on. Behind him he heard Jack asking Amy. He walked by a group near the Lullaby—Leo, Christy, Orbie, Sim, Gloria. They spoke but he did not answer.
One long narrow gangplank stretched from the T of D Dock to the forward weather deck of the Do Tell. It was unguarded. Calypso was coming over the yacht’s speaker system. A sweaty clot of enthusiasts were accompanying it with improvised percussion instruments, clanging and banging while couples danced with more abandon than taste on the shadowy decks.
He prowled the decks and did not find Anne. He went below. There was an incongruous game of dominos in the main lounge, and one man in pajamas calmly reading a paper with a steaming mug of coffee beside him. A huge brown man was trundling around and around on his hands and knees, giving, from time to time, a realistic whinny. A dainty little blonde rode on his back, a look of happy ecstasy on her face, saying, “Gidyap, gidyap, horsie-horsie.”
Joe paused to let them go by and went to the man reading the paper. “I’m looking for Miss Browder.”
He put the paper down and frowned. “Who?”
“Miss Browder. A tall blonde girl. Her name is Anne. Somebody invited her to come on your cruise with you.”
“Whoa!” the man roared. The circling horse came to a stop and lifted its head inquiringly. “Bunny, you know about anybody inviting some gal along?”
“That was B. J. He asked me if it was okay. We got room so I said sure. Gidyap, horsie-horsie.”
“Hold on. This fella is looking for the gal.”
“She went off to pack. Should be back aboard now.”
“I told you and I told B. J. and I told everybody else, no bringing no more women aboard on this here cruise unless I say okay. It turns out to be somebody’s wife, and we got us all kind of fuss, like over in Clearwater. You buck that little gal off, horsie, and he’p this man find his girl.”
Bunny rose to an impressive muscular height and the little blonde slid off, pouting. “C’mawn,” Bunny said to Joe. They went forward, along a narrow corridor with stateroom doors on either side, a deep soft carpet on the deck, soft bulkhead lights at spaced intervals.
“There’s ole B. J.,” Bunny said.
A big florid man with hair and brows baked to sand white was thumping a stateroom door and pleading with someone inside.
As they came up to him, Bunny said, “What’s goin’ on, boy?”
“She’s done locked me out. Ain’t that a hell of a thing? Carrying on something fierce. Crying and all. Figure I could just get aholt of her one time I could gentle her down.”
“This that Anne girl?”
“Sure is.”
“Old Jimbo is going to chew you good, boy.”
“What for? She went and packed her stuff. I’m not kidnaping her.”
Anne’s voice was suddenly clear, calling out just on the other side of the locked door, distorted with fright and despair. “Help me! He won’t let me get off the boat! He won’t let me go! I changed my mind. Please help me, whoever’s out there. Get the police.”
Bunny said, “Oh, no, you’re not kidnaping her. Not a little bit. She’s happy as can be.”
“Coulda handled it polite and easy,” B. J. said sullenly.
“It’s me,” Joe called. “Joe.”
“Help me, Joe!”
“It’s okay to unlock and come out,” Bunny yelled. “This fella will take you ashore, gal.”
“Joe?”
“It’s all right, honey.”
The lock clicked. The door opened cautiously. The soft light shone on her tear-stained face, her apprehensive eyes. Joe took her suitcase and walked her along the corridor, his hand on her waist. She walked with shoulders hunched, head down.
Bunny said, “Sorry about this thing, mister. B. J. he gets himself worked up sometimes.”
It is peculiar that any act of special violence seems to have a timing that suits the time and the place, as though on some subliminal level, it draws its own unsuspecting audience, sets its own horrible stage.
The stage was set for the violence that ended the birthday party in the following manner. Leo and Christy, discovering a mutual ravenous hunger, started toward the parking lot with the intention of driving to an all-night restaurant. On the way to the parking lot they met Lew Burgoyne. In the distance the three of them could hear Jack Engly calling his wife.
Lew said, “He’s sure anxious to find that little girl.”
“If he does, he’ll wish he hadn’t,” Christy said.
“I’ve been thinking that too,” Leo said. “About half an hour ago Christy looked out the cabin port of my boat and saw Rigsby sneaking her onto the Angel.”
“The hell you say!”
“That’s right,” Christy said.
“Should have guessed it,” Lew muttered. They went on to the parking lot and found Christy’s car hopelessly blocked in by two other cars, so they turned and went back toward D Dock, walking hand in hand, planning to see what they could find to eat aboard the Shifless.
After they had left to go to the lot, Lew had stood in the darkness and then had seen a fine solution to the problem he and Orbie had discussed. So he set off at a trot toward the sound of Jack’s voice.
“Did you find her?” Jack asked anxiously.
“Not exactly, but I got me an idea.”
“What?”
“Maybe if a fella should take a look aboard the Angel …”
“No!” Engly whispered. “No!”
“It’s just an idea.”
As Jack hurried toward D Dock, Lew followed slowly, grinning, thinking of the battering Rigsby would take. He arrived at D Dock at the same time as Leo and Christy. The group standing near the
Lullaby was staring along the bright white length of the dock, staring at Jack Engly striding out toward the end of the dock.
Orbie turned and looked at Lew and said, “What the hell are you grinning about?”
“Told him Judy was with Rex. Jack’ll soften him up some.”
Orbie’s face was utterly blank for a moment, then became tight with anger. “You plain damn fool! He stopped dead right here. Didn’t say a word to me. Jumped onto the Lullaby and grabbed the short tarpon gaff off the port rack and jumped back on the dock and took off. Come on!”
He turned and started to run after Engly. After a shocked pause, the other men began to trot after him. A short tarpon gaff is a cruel hook about a foot long, fashioned of half inch steel, with about three inches between the needle point and the shank. The shank is welded to a six-inch crosspiece of one-inch bar stock which forms the hand grip.
Two further coincidences heightened tension. Just as Engly reached that point of the dock directly astern of the Angel, Joe came off the gangplank of the Do Tell, his arm still around Anne. The other coincidence was wickedly effective. The stack of Calypso records on the Do Tell ended. And in the sudden silence came plump Judy’s cat-yelps of love, her wild ululations, muffled by the closed doors of the trunk cabin.
Jack Engly stood as though he had taken a bullet in the heart. The muscles of his lean back bulged the sweat-damp T shirt, his arms hung long, raw, brown and powerful in the white glare of the temporary floodlights. His knuckles were pale where his hand gripped the gaff. He shook his head violently.
Orbie had almost reached him, yelling his name, when Engly sprang like a great cat. He pounced lightly down into the cockpit, eeled past the wheel and a stay, kicked the doors open, grabbed the top of the trunk cabin, swung his legs through, arching his back to drop out of sight into the darkness of the roomy cabin amidships. Wild things move that way, in a flickering of such speed it seems supernatural—a city cat speeding on tiptoe up the precarious slant of a mountain of trash to nail the random mouse inside a rusty bucket.
One second after they heard the thud of his feet as he landed below, the woman began to scream. It was a sound that seemed to chill the sweat of the hot night. She screamed with all her might with every breath she took. They could tell she was holding her mouth wide and flat. It was a cry of terror and disgust and madness. The human throat is not constructed to endure such a sound. In each additional scream there was an accretion of hoarseness. It was obvious that she would continue to make that sound until the voice was utterly gone and continue beyond that, the lungs exploding a rush of air through the silenced throat in idiot rhythm.
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