A Flash of Green
Page 42
“Now make him last,” somebody said softly, “or there’ll be some people getting no turn at all.”
The world slipped abruptly, and hammered his face. He was lifted and jounced, he was danced and dandled as the thuds landed, the sky burst and rocked, as his mouth swung loose and his heart flapped free. He bounced to their gruntings and tried to laugh, but they gave him no time, and the world turned gray and slowly moved away from him, like a holiday ship leaving a small broken wharf.
Twenty-five
BY JANUARY, as the new tourist season began to approach its peak, the Grassy Bay fill was beginning to take shape. The drag lines waddled above the shallows, atop the dikes they built as they moved. The big dredges worked around the clock. By the outlets of the big pipes, where the dredges spewed their black foam of water and bay bottom, the gulls and the children herded, to snatch the living shells and the small fish.
The value of all property in the area zoned commercial went up in anticipation of the new community which would be built upon the marl.
On a cold day in late January, Jimmy Wing walked out of the hospital into the tug and bluster of a northwest wind. He carried a small canvas airlines bag. As he started walking slowly toward the corner where he could catch a bus, somebody called his name. He turned and saw Elmo Bliss in a pickup truck. Wing hesitated and then went to the truck. Elmo leaned across and shoved the door open for him.
“Get on in here, Jim.”
He got in out of the wind and pulled the door shut. Elmo gave him a cigarette.
“You waiting for somebody?” Jimmy asked.
“Waiting for you. I heard you were getting out today. They didn’t keep you long this time, boy.”
“Not so much damage this time.”
“Turn so I can see you better. Damn if you haven’t got your face messed up for good. Jimmy, God damn you, what are you trying to do to me?”
“I’m not trying to do anything to you, Elmo.”
“You trying to prove something?”
“I don’t really know.”
“What you’re doing isn’t making any sense to anybody. You should know by now you go down to Everset and bad-mouth me down there, you’re going to get the ass knocked right off you ever’ time. Twice you went down there and twice you got half killed and put in the hospital. Then you went to Jacksonville and I thought we were shut of you. But you have to come back and go down there again and get whipped again. Why didn’t you stay in Jacksonville?”
“I got homesick, Elmo.”
“You can’t get no suitable kind of work here.”
“Why are you worried about me, Elmo?”
“Don’t you know I could have had you killed, you silly bastard?”
Jimmy Wing shrugged and sighed. “A lot of people knew that, Elmo, knowing how I cut you down to county size before you got a really good start. And so a lot of people were watching to see if I turned up missing. Then they’d have known I was on the bottom of the Gulf or down on the floor of some swamp. But if you let me walk around loose, the idea could get around that I’d done you no real harm. People would begin to say I’d made the whole thing up.”
Elmo’s voice went up a half octave. “But I was fixing to let you walk around loose, Jim boy! But you keep going down to Everset where they vote strong for me, and people are thinking it’s me getting you beat half to death every once in a while.”
“Then you’re not really worried about me, Elmo. You just don’t want me keeping the memory green.”
“What the hell do you want, Jim? I got Darse Coombs run out of the area. People are forgetting fast. I want they should have a chance to forget the whole damn thing. What the hell do you want me to do?”
Jimmy Wing turned his battered face toward Elmo. He laughed abruptly and harshly. “This is pretty funny, Commissioner, or whatever the title is these days. You’re a big man. A good business, a big family, big house, lots of weight and muscle. And I haven’t got a car, a house or a job. Why should a big man like you have to ask me anything? People like me, you can buy us or scare us, can’t you?”
“You wouldn’t stay bought, boy.”
“Think you can scare me?”
Elmo studied him for a moment. “I think I could have, last summer maybe. But now I got an idea it can’t be done. A man has something he can’t stand the thought of losing, that man you can scare. What I want to know is, are you going to go look for any more trouble?”
“I just don’t know, Elmo. I just couldn’t say right now. It may happen like this. I’ll get another little job like the last one I had. Rough carpenter work, or kitchen help, so I can give my sister something toward my room and board. And some night I may go home and sit and start thinking about just how much of a cold-hearted son of a bitch you are, and then I might get the urge to get on a bus and go down to Wister or Everset and give a few speeches around about you.”
“But you don’t really know?”
“Not at the moment, Elmo.”
“A thousand dollars cash money would take you a long way from here.”
“I tried going away and I didn’t like it.”
“You want a foreman job? I can break you in on foundations, forms and finishing and block work.”
“I tried working for you one time, remember.”
Elmo banged his fist against the steering wheel. “Damn you, Jimmy Wing, you force my hand. I can’t let this go on. You got folks laughing at me. There’s other people trying to talk too much just because you get away with it. Now, you know I can’t stand for that. I thought of two ways to stop it. One way, I spread the word nobody touches you, no matter what you say. But I thought that over, and I don’t like it. You’d keep right on talking.”
“Probably.”
“So I got to do something that actual turns my stomach to think on it. But you’re forcing me into it. I know you have nothing to do any more with the people you were close to. But they must mean some little thing to you. The very next time you get yourself put in the hospital making a fool out of me, you just take a look around and you’ll see some familiar faces under them bandages. For a starter it will be Haas and his wife and the Hubble woman, and maybe Mitchie McClure. And if you don’t learn from that, the list will be longer the next time.”
Jimmy Wing looked directly into Elmo’s eyes for a long moment. “Thanks,” he said.
“What for?”
“I wasn’t sure I was getting to you. How can you be sure I’m not out of my mind, Elmo? Your friends kicked me in the head that first time. How do you know I give a damn who you rough up?”
Elmo tilted his head and stared straight up in helpless exasperation. “What do you want from me? Just get off my back, will you?”
“Can’t you figure out what I want?”
“I would be humbly grateful to know.”
“I had to come back from Jacksonville to fight you, Elmo. I’ve been fighting you. I’m wearing the marks of it. But I’d rather fight you in a way I know more about. I had my gun taken away from me, so I have to use rocks and sticks.”
Elmo’s mouth hung open for a moment. “You want me to get you back onto the paper!”
“I think we’d both be happier.”
“But I couldn’t swing that, Jimmy boy. Not now.”
“Not alone, but you can push the people who can. Shannard, Lander, Lesser, Cable, Killian … want more names?”
“But they’d figure me for a damn fool!”
“You aren’t looking too good lately anyhow, Elmo. You heard any of those little verses people have learned by heart? I make them very simple, very easy to remember. ‘A man in a house built by Bliss/Has one comfort he surely will miss./When the rain starts to come, he …’ ”
“I had an idea you were making those up.”
“If I was back on the paper, I wouldn’t have time.”
“Hell, they don’t bother me. They’re good advertising.”
“Got a lot of new contracts lately?”
“Honest to God, W
ing, you got more brass than sense. How can you expect me to get you back into a spot where …”
Jimmy Wing opened the truck door and got out. He held the door open and turned and said, “I don’t expect a thing, Elmo. You gutted me, like a trash fish. But I got over it. I healed up. You had no way of knowing I would. So I’ll be on your back as long as we both shall live. And I’ll be thinking of new ways to turn you into a clown. So play it your way or my way, whichever you think will work out best for you. You’re half the size you were last summer. And one day it will be half that, and then halved again. And it’s too late now to have me killed because the whole county will know it’s because you couldn’t stand having people laugh at you. People never forget that kind of weakness.”
He slammed the truck door and began walking toward the corner.
On the evening of February tenth, at twenty minutes after nine, Jimmy Wing drove to Kat Hubble’s house in a borrowed car, marched to the front door and knocked. The entrance light went on. She opened the door and stared out at him through the screen.
“Jimmy! Won’t … won’t you come in?”
“Just for a minute.”
As he moved into the light he saw her expression change, saw her bite her lip. “Children no longer scream and run,” he said, “so it must be improving.”
“I heard about the times it happened. But I didn’t know it was …”
“They like to mark you. It’s an expression of outraged opinion.”
“Will you sit down? Can I fix you a drink?”
“No drink, thanks.”
“People say you … went down there expecting to be beaten.”
“Let’s say I didn’t expect to win any fights down there.”
“Wasn’t that … a little childish, Jimmy?”
“Of course. A child has to find out if it is brave. It has to find out if it can cling to the things it wants to believe in. So I have a restyled nose, and some lasting lumps and a partial bridge and a slight impairment of vision in the left eye. But the childishness is intact.”
“You’ve changed in other ways.”
“Maybe. I can’t tell yet.”
“And you sit looking at me as if you’re sort of defying me.”
“That isn’t the impression I want to give. It wasn’t easy to come here. Maybe that’s what shows. Anyhow, you know about the paper.”
“That’s all I heard all day, Jimmy. It’s truly fantastic.”
“I saw you a dozen times. But I went around corners and ducked across streets. Once you were at the Burger Den with the kids. In a booth at the left. I was supposed to bring a rack of glasses out of the kitchen and stow them under the counter, but I saw you through the porthole in the door and I didn’t want to have you see me. Pride, I guess. I wanted to wait until I could see you on my terms. Like now. Like being back on the paper.”
“How could it happen? Everybody was making guesses today. Some of them were wild.”
“Sometime maybe I can tell you about it, about how it happened. If you want to know. If you have any interest in knowing. But I can’t tell you now. Not because it’s a secret. There’s another reason. If I tried to tell you now, I might start to cry. That’s pretty silly, I guess. I told myself I didn’t give a damn. Then when it worked out, I realized today just how much I wanted it. I was on the edge without knowing it.”
“Some day I’d like to know, Jimmy.”
“All I want you to know, as of now, it isn’t any kind of a deal.”
“When I heard, I wondered about that. But I don’t wonder any more. You … belong to yourself, don’t you?”
“I think so. I hope that’s the way it is. A funny thing. I understand Brian Haas better. I’ve got the same disease in a different form. So neither of us are going to be totally sure, ever. My escape routes were less obvious, that’s all.”
He stood up abruptly. “I just wanted you to know I got straightened out, Kat.”
“I’m glad to know.”
“But I don’t want you to think it’s like the last time I talked to you, asking you if there was any new place for us to start, asking because I’d bitched it so badly I wanted a chance to repair my own self-esteem.”
“Neither of us did very well.”
She had gone to the door with him. He looked at her with a speculative expression. “But it was two other people. Or is that just a rationalization?”
“I … I don’t think so. Two other people, Jimmy.” She walked out toward the car with him, hugging herself against the night chill, her shoulders slightly hunched.
“But even so, Kat, your good opinion is important.”
“You have it, for goodness sake! I can’t set myself up as a judge. I try to sometimes. But I shouldn’t.”
“Well … I’ll see you around. How come you didn’t rent the house?”
“I got a small raise and figured I could swing it this year.”
“I guess the kids are glad of that.”
“Oh yes.”
“Say hello for me.”
“I will.”
He got into the car and rolled the window down. She looked in at him. “I’ve got a late lunch hour now, so I take the coffee break about eleven-fifteen.”
“Same place?”
“Yes. Anytime you happen to be downtown …”
“Thanks, Kat.”
“Good night, Jimmy.”
On the way back toward town he pulled the borrowed car off the road and parked near the bay-fill project. He walked down to the bay front and stood by the water and looked out at the dredges. Both of them were working, both brilliant against the black night in the glare of their floodlights. They made a vast wet gnashing grinding roar. He lit a cigarette. He could see tiny figures moving through the lights on the furthest one.
“Anything you want, mister?” The voice of the night watchman startled him.
“Just looking.”
“This is private property.”
“I know. And that’s the trouble, isn’t it?”
“Trouble with what? Don’t you give me trouble, mister. I’m asking you nice to get back in your car and go.”
Jimmy Wing snapped his cigarette into the black and dwindling waters of Grassy Bay and walked slowly back to the car. Long after he had crossed to the mainland he fancied that he could still hear the sound of the dredges.
For Sam Prentiss
Jim Neville
Tom Dickinson
And all others opposed to the uglification of America
By John D. MacDonald
The Brass Cupcake
Murder for the Bride
Judge Me Not
Wine for the Dreamers
Ballroom of the Skies
The Damned
Dead Low Tide
The Neon Jungle
Cancel All Our Vows
All These Condemned
Area of Suspicion
Contrary Pleasure
A Bullet for Cinderella
Cry Hard, Cry Fast
You Live Once
April Evil
Border Town Girl
Murder in the Wind
Death Trap
The Price of Murder
The Empty Trap
A Man of Affairs
The Deceivers
Clemmie
Cape Fear (The Executioners)
Soft Touch
Deadly Welcome
Please Write for Details
The Crossroads
The Beach Girls
Slam the Big Door
The End of the Night
The Only Girl in the Game
Where Is Janice Gantry?
One Monday We Killed Them All
A Key to the Suite
A Flash of Green
The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
On the Run
The Drowner
The House Guest
End of the Tiger and Other Stories
The Last One Left
S*E*V*E*N
<
br /> Condominium
Other Times, Other Worlds
Nothing Can Go Wrong
The Good Old Stuff
One More Sunday
More Good Old Stuff
Barrier Island
A Friendship: The Letters of Dan Rowan and John D. MacDonald, 1967–1974
THE TRAVIS MCGEE SERIES
The Deep Blue Good-by
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
The Quick Red Fox
A Deadly Shade of Gold
Bright Orange for the Shroud
Darker Than Amber
One Fearful Yellow Eye
Pale Gray for Guilt
The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper
Dress Her in Indigo
The Long Lavender Look
A Tan and Sandy Silence
The Scarlet Ruse
The Turquoise Lament
The Dreadful Lemon Sky
The Empty Copper Sea
The Green Ripper
Free Fall in Crimson
Cinnamon Skin
The Lonely Silver Rain
The Official Travis McGee Quizbook
About the Author
JOHN D. MACDONALD was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.