He said they were going to come and get him.
I have never seen a woman cry like that, before or since. They came and got him like he said, and they put him in prison for life in Leavenworth, Kansas. It was an officer he killed. My mother took a bus out there to see him that Christmas, and every Christmas from then on until he died two years ago. When there was enough money, she'd take along me or my sister. I got to go twice. My sister went out there three times. She went off into dreaming and memories.
In a little while she gave a start and looked at me and said, 'I'm sorry. The way it was, he thought he would get out sooner or later. I guess they would have let him out, but there was always some kind of trouble coming up.
He wasn't a man to settle down to prison like some can. He was a very proud man, Mr. McGee. But here is the thing I have to tell you.
Before they came and got him. I was nine. My sister was seven. He sat on the porch with his arms around us, and he told us all the wonderful things that would happen when they turned him loose. We'd have our own boats and our own horses. We would travel all over the world. We would have pretty dresses for every day in the year. I always remembered that. When I was older, I remembered it to my mother. I thought she might make fun. But she was serious enough. She told me I was never to talk about it to anybody. She said my father would work things out in his own way, and some day everything would be fine for all of us. But of course it never was. Last year a man came to us, name of Junior Allen. A smiling man. He said he spent five long years in that lace and knew my daddy well. And he knew things about us he could only know if my daddy told him. So we were glad to see him.
He said he had no family of his own. A freckledy smiling man, quick to talk and good with his hands at fixing things. He came in with us, and he got work over at the Esso station, and the money helped. My mother was started sick then, but not so sick she couldn't care for the kids by day, when Christinethat's my sister-and I were working. Her two, and my boy Davie, three little kids. It would have neatened out better if Junior Allen had took up with Christine, her husband being killed by the hurricane of sixty-one, when the cinderblock wall of the Candle Key Suprex blew over onto him. Jaimie Hasson his name was. We've had all this bad luck with our men." She tried to smile.
"Sometimes it comes in bunches."
"Lord knows we've had a bunch. It was me Junior Allen liked best. By the time we took up together, my mother was too sick to care too much. As she got sicker she seemed to turn inward like some people do, not noticing much.
Christine knew What was going on between us, and she told me it was wrong. But Junior said the way Wally Kerr took off and left me, I was as good as divorced. He said I couldn't even ask for a divorce until seven years went by without hearing from Wally. I since found out he lied.
"I lived like man and wife with Junior Allen, Mr. McGee, and I loved that man. When Mother died, it was good to have him close. it was near Christmas. She was washing greens, and she just bent over the sink and made a little kitten sound and slid down dying and she was gone. Christine stopped her job because somebody had to be with the kids, but with me and Junior Allen working, there was just enough to get by. There was one thing strange in all that time he was with us. I thought it was because he had gotten so close to my daddy in prison. He liked to talk-about Daddy. He never stopped asking questions about him about what things he liked to do and what places he liked to go, almost as if he was trying to live the same life my daddy had lived 'way before the war, when I was as little as Davie is now. Now I remember other things that didn't seem as strange then as they do now. I remembered about the fish shack my daddy built on a little no-name island, and I told Junior Allen, and the next day he was off he was gone all day in the skiff, and he came back bone tired and grouchy. Little things like that.
I know now that he was hunting, Mr. McGee.
He was hunting whatever my daddy hid, whatever it was he brought back that was going to give us those dresses and horses and around the world. Using one excuse and another, he managed to dig up just about every part of the yard. One day we awoke and Junior Allen was gone. That was near the end of this last February, and both the markers by our old driveway were tumbled down. My daddy built them long ago of coquina rock too big and grand for such a little driveway, but built rough. Junior Allen tumbled them down and away he went, and in the ruin of the one on the left was something I don't know what it was to start. Scabs of rust and some rotten cloth that was maybe once army color, and some wire like a big clip, and some rust still in the length of a little chain, and something that could have once been some kind of a top to something.
"He took along his personal things, so I knew it was just like Wally Kerr all over again.
No good looking for him. But he showed up again three weeks later, on Candle Key. Not to see me. He came back to see Mrs. Atkinson.
She's a beautiful woman. She has one of the big new houses there, and I guess he met her when he was working at the Esso and putting gas in her Thunderbird car. People told me he was staying in her house, and that he'd come down in expensive clothes and a big boat of his own and moved right in with her. They would tell me and then look at me to see what I'd say -or do. The fourth day he was there I came upon him in the town. I tried to speak and he turned around and hurried the other way, and I shamed myself, running after him.
He got into her car and she wasn't there and he was pawing his pockets and cursing because he couldn't find the key, his face ugly. I was crying and trying to ask him what he was doing to me. He called me a busted-down little slut and told me to go back and hide in the swamp where I came from, and he roared away. Enough people saw it and enough heard it, so it gave them a lot to talk about. His boat was right there, a big cruiser, registered to him and owned by him, right at Mrs. Atkinson's dock, and she closed the house and they went off in it. Now I know she lived careful, and couldn't buy him a boat like that. And I know that living with us, Junior Allen didn't have one dollar extra. But he looked and looked and looked and found something and went away and came back with money. But I can't see there's a thing in the world anybody can do about it. Chookle said tell you, so I've told you. I don't know where he is now. I don't know if Mrs. Atkinson knows, if she isn't still with him someplace. And if anybody could find him, what could they do?"
"Was there a name and port of registry on the boat?"
"Called it the Play Pen, out of Miami. Not a new boat, but the name new. He showed a couple of people the papers to prove it was his. I'd say it was a custom boat, maybe thirty-eight foot, white topsides, gray hull and a blue stripe."
"Then you left Candle Key."
"Not long after. There just wasn't enough money with just one of us working. When I was little a tourist lady saw me dancing alone and gave me free dancing lessons every winter she came down. Before I was married I danced two years for pay up in Miami. So I came back into it and it's enough money so I can send Christine enough and she can get along. I didn't want to be in Candle Key any more anyway."
She looked at me with soft apologetic brown eyes, all dressed in her best to come talk to me. The world had done its best to subdue and humble her, but the edge of her good tough spirit showed through. I found I had taken an irrational dislike to Junior Allen, that smiling man. And I do not function too well on emotional motivations. I am wary of them. And I am wary of a lot of other things, such as plastic credit cards, payroll deductions, insurance programs, retirement benefits, savings accounts, Green Stamps, time clocks, newspapers, mortgages, sermons, miracle fabrics, deodorants, check lists, time payments, political. parties, lending libraries, television, actresses, junior chambers of commerce, pageants, progress, and manifest destiny, I am wary of the whole dreary deadening structured mess we have built into such a glittering top-heavy structure that there is nothing left to see but the glitter, and the brute routines of maintaining it.
Reality is in the enduring eyes, the unspoken dreadful accusation in the enduring eyes of a worn yo
ung woman who looks at you, and hopes for nothing.
But these things can never form lecture materials for blithe Travis McGee. I am also wary of all earnestness.
"Let me do some thinking about all this, Cathy."
"Sure,' she said, and put her empty glass down.
"Another drink."
"I'll be getting along, thank you kindly."
"I can get in touch through Chook."
"Sure."
I let her out. I noticed a small and touching thing. Despite all wounds and dejections, her dancer's step was so firm and light and quick as to give a curious imitation of joy.
I walked through the lounge and tapped at the door and went into the master stateroom.
Chook's fresh clothing was laid out on my bed, and her sodden stomp-suit was in a heap on the floor. I heard her in the tub, wallowing and sloshing and humming.
"Yo,' I said toward the half-open door.
"Come in, darling. I'm indecent."
The bathroom was humid with steam and soap. The elderly Palm Beach sybarite who had ordered the pleasure barge for his- declining years had added many nice touches. One was the tub, a semi-sunken, pale blue creation a full seven feet long and four feet wide. Chook was stretched out full length in it, her black hair afloat, bobbing around in there, creamy with suds, utterly luxuriant. She beckoned me over and I sat on the wide rim near the foot of the tub.
I guess Chook is about twenty-three or -four.
Her face is a little older than that. It has that stern look you see in old pictures of the Plains Indians. At her best, it is a forceful and striking face, redolent of strength and dignity. At worst it sometimes would seem to be the face of a Dartmouth boy dressed for the farcical chorus line. But that body, seen more intimately than ever before, was incomparably, mercilessly female, deep and glossy, rounded-under the tidy little fatty layer of girl pneumatics-with useful muscle.
This was a special challenge, and I didn't know the terms, knew only that most of the time they are terms one cannot ultimately afford, not with the ones who, like Chook, have their own special force and substance and requirements. She had created the challenge, and was less bold with it than she wanted to believe.
"How about that Cathryn?" she said, her voice elaborately casual.
"A little worn around the edges."
"How not? But how about helping her?"
"There's a lot to find out first. Maybe too much. Maybe it would be too long and too expensive finding out what I'd have to find out."
But you couldn't tell about that until you looked into it."
"I could just make a guess."
"And not do anything."
"What's it to you, Chook?"
"I like her. And it's been rough."
"The wide world is full of likable people who get kicked in the stomach regularly, They're disaster-prone. Something goes wrong. The sky starts falling on their head. And you can't reverse, the process."
She sloshed a little and scowled. My left hand was braced on the edge of the tub. Suddenly she lifted a long steaming gleaming leg and put the soaking sole of her bare foot firmly on the back of my hand. She curled her toes around the edge of my wrist in a strange little clasp and said, her voice husky and her eyes a little alarmed at her own daring, 'The water's fine."
it was just a little too contrived. 'who are you trying to be?"
She was startled. 'That's a funny thing to say. 'You are Chookie McCall, very resolute and ambitious and not exactly subject to fits of abandon. And we have been friends for a couple of months. I made my pass, 'way back when, and you straightened me out very pleasantly and firmly. So who are you trying to be?
Fair question?"
She took her foot away. 'Do you have to be such a bastard, Trav? Maybe I was having a fit of abandon. Why do you have to question things?"
"Because I know you, and maybe there are enough people getting hurt."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"Chook, dear girl, you are just not trivial enough for purely recreational sex. You are more complex than that. So this very pleasant and unexpected invitation has to be part of some kind of a program or plan of action or design for the future."
Her eyes shifted just enough to let me know I had struck home. 'Whatever it was, darling, you've bitched it good."
I smiled at her. 'If it's pure recreation, dear, without claims or agreements or deathless vows, I'm at your service. I like you. I like you enough to keep from trying to fake you into anything, even though, at the moment, it's one hell of a temptation. But I think you would have to get too deeply involved in ur own yo justifications because, as I said, you are a complex woman. And a strong woman. And I am no part of your future, not in any emotional way." I stood up and looked down at her.
you know the rules, it's still your decision. Just holler."
I went back to the lounge. I examined my sterling character and wondered if it would be functional and entertaining to thud my head against the wall. my fingernails made interesting little grooves in the palms of my hands. My ears grew, extending to tall hairy points, and as I did a little pacing, they kept turning in her direction, listening for a shy summons.
when at last she came out, she wore white slacks and a black blouse, with her dark damp hair bound in a red scarf. She carried her dancing gear in a little canvas case. She looked tired and shy and ruefu, an came s to me, meeting my glance with a multitude of little quick glances of her own. Clothing leans her, disguising ripeness.
I cupped my hand on her chin and kissed a soft, warm and humble Indian mouth. 'What was it all about?" I asked her. -A fight with Frank. Kind of a nasty one. So I guess I was trying to prove something. Now I feel like a fool."
She sighed. 'But I would have felt worse the other way. I guess. Eventually. so thanks for being smarter about me than I am."My friend, it wasn't easy.She scowled at me. 'What's the matter with me? Why can't I be in love with you instead of him? He's really a terrible man. He makes me feel degraded, Trav. But when he walks into the room, sometimes I feel as if I'll faint with love. I think that's why... I feel so sympathetic toward Cathy. Frank is my Junior Allen. Please help her."
I told her I would think about it. I walked her to her little car, out in the sweet hot night, and watched her go sputtering off, carrying the ripeness, unimpaired, back to surly Frank.
I listened for the roar of applause, fanfare of trumpets, for the speech and the medal. I heard the lisping flap of water against the hull, the soft mutter of the traffic on the smooth asphalt that divides the big marina from the public beach, bits of music blending into nonsense, boat laughter, the slurred harmony of alcohol, and a mosquito song vectoring in on my neck.
I kicked a concrete pier and hurt my toes.
These are the playmate years, and they are demonstrably fraudulent. The scene is reputed to be acrawl with adorably amoral bunnies to whom sex is a pleasant social favor. The new culture. And they are indeed present and available, in exhausting quantity, but there is a curious tastelessness about them. A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of very much value to anyone else. They be come a pretty little convenience, like a guest towel. And the cute little things they say, and their dainty little squeals of pleasure and release are as contrived as the embroidered initials on the guest towels. only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worth the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Rather you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave. I love you can be said only two ways.
But tension is also a fact of life, and I found myself strolling toward the big rich Wheeler where the Alabama Tiger maintains his permanent floating house party. I was welcomed with vague cheers. I nursed a drink, made myself excruciatingly amiable, suitably mysterious and witty in the proper key, and carefully observed the group relationships until I was able to identify two possibl
es. I settled for a blooming redhead from Waco, Takes-us, name of Molly Bea Archer, carefully cut her out of the pack and trundled her, tipsy and willing, back to the Busted Flush. She thought it an adorable little old boat, and scampered about, ooing and cooing at the fixtures and appointments, kittenish as all get out until faced with the implacable reality of bedtime, then settled into her little social chore with acquired skill and natural diligence. We rested and exchanged the necessary compliments, and she told me of her terrible problem-whether to go back to Baylor for her senior year, or marry some adorable little old boy who was terribly in love with her, or take a wonderful job in Houston working for some adorable little old insurance company. She sighed and gave me a sisterly little kiss and a friendly little pat, and got up and went and fixed her face and crammed herself back into her shorts and halter, and after I had built two fresh drinks into the glasses we had brought from the other craft, I walked her back to the TIger's party and stayed fifteen more minutes as a small courtesy.
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 01 - The Deep Blue Good-By Page 2
