John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 08 - One Fearful Yellow Eye

by One Fearful Yellow Eye(lit)

  She opened the door inward, pushed the storm door open six inches and with a cheery smile, said, "You want Harry, he had to go up to Moline again early, but he ought to be home by supper."

  She was weathering the downslope of the thirties very nicely, a small sturdy woman with a wide face, pretty eyes, network of grin wrinkles, mop of curly dark hair with a first touch of white ones over her ears. Fuzzy pink sweater, denim ranch pants in stretch fabric. White moccasins, white sox. A shapely and durable figure, breasts rather small and abrupt under the pink fuzz.

  "You're Mrs. Shottlehauster?"

  "Yes, but honest to Betsy, if you're selling something I just haven't got the time, and you can believe it."

  "I'm not selling anything, and you can believe it. I'm trying to get a credit report on some people named Farley on Depue Road, and I'm not having much luck. I found out their kids know your kids. I don't want to bother you, but if you could spare just a minute or two to answer some questions..."

  "Heck, I can spare time for that. You come right on in, Mr..."

  "McGee: Travis McGee, ma'am."

  "Well, I'm Mildred Shottlehauster," she said, leading me through the entrance hallway into a twolevel living room decorated in too many colors and patterns, and too densely populated with furniture, some of it good, and most of it borax.

  "You sit right there and be comfortable," she said. "We've got those four Farley kids staying with us, and I certainly would like to know how long, not that they're any special problem or anything. I've got my six, and once you get up to six I guess it doesn't make too much difference if you have six or ten. And they're really good kids. They're almost too meek and quiet and polite. They make mine seem like wild Indians or something. Mine are sixteen, fourteen, twelve, eleven, eight and seven so... "

  "I'd never believe it, Mrs. S."

  "Well thank you, kind sir, she said. Anyhoo, the Farley children seem to fit right in and actually there's less fighting and squabbling when they're here. Harry and I. are just doing the neighborly thing. Monday night it was, just on toward dark, you remember how raw and nasty it was, Mr. Farley came to the door and wouldn't come in. He hemmed and hawed and said that his wife had to go to Chicago, and Susan, the oldest-a perfectly darling girl she'd gone off to join her mother and he suddenly found out he had to go on a business trip for a few days and he didn't want to leave the other four alone and could we give them bed and board for a few days. He said he could pay for it. Well, we forgave him for offering money for a neighborly deed because... well, that family is right off the city streets and they can't be expected to know how we do things here in the country. When we said he certainly could bring them over, he said they were out in the truck, and so they were, chilled to the very bone. They came shivering in with their little bags and bundles of clothes and toothbrushes. I must confess I had qualms about my pack getting too friendly with those kids when they first came here. I mean they are sort of underprivileged, and you don't know what nasty tricks and habits children can pick up in the slums, and pass along, do you? It was last August my Bruce came racing home to tell me some family named Farley had moved into the old Duggins place. It's been empty three years since old Sam died, and he must have been older than God, and his only kin a sister in Seattle who couldn't care less, and nobody knew she'd even put it up for rent with that Country Estate Agency over in Princeton, but it's plain to see it's the kind of run-down place you could get for practically nothing, not like when you're nearer the city and they get picked up for vacation houses and so on. But you can believe it, those Farley kids, Freda and Julian and Freddy and Tommy, they're dandy kids. What did you want to ask me? Oops, I've got to go check the pies. I got stuck again. Four cherry pies for the Mission Aid supper and my dang oven thermostat is screwjee. Would you like some coffee, Mr. McGee? It's on the stove. Come on along."

  I followed her out toward the whomping of the music, and she twisted the dial down to background size with a single expert tweak as she went by the radio. "I caught the coffee thing from Harry," she said. "He was in the Navy, so it's always on the fire, grind our own beans, never let it begin to bubble, like some people are about wine, I guess." And as she spoke she deftly assembled tall white cup and saucer, poured it steaming rich, slid it into position at the end of the center island which was a breakfast bar, put sugar and cream within reach. She went over and stood at her eye-level wall oven, all copper and chrome, and peered in through the glass front at her pies.

  "The only way I'm going to be able to tell is from the color of the crust. Lousy thermostat. Hey, want a cinnamon pecan roll? The bakery just delivered fresh, and they're the special this week."

  She poured coffee for herself, got out the butter and the rolls, and sat around the corner of the bar end of the island at my left.

  "Marvelous coffee, Mrs. Shottlehauster."

  "Specialty of the house, thank you kind sir," she said. "What is it the Farleys want to buy?"

  "I don't know. We're a service organization and we work for a lot of different client companies. The point is are they a good credit risk up to such and such an amount."

  She munched slowly, frowning. The pad of muscle at the corner of her jaw bulged with each bite. There was a flake of cooked sugar on her narrow underlip and, her tongue slipped cleverly out and hooked it in. "I like to try to be fair to everybody. So I just couldn't say. It just depends on how much they can put into the spring planting, if they know what to plant, if they know how to go about getting help from the county agent and the state, if they're all willing to work like Arabian slaves.... I just don't know, honestly. Mr. Farley is well-spoken. You can tell he's had some advantages. I tried to be neighborly, and so did a couple of other women, but we spread the word that nobody else need waste their time. I stopped there last September and didn't even get invited in. They just stared at me, and I had the idea they were laughing at me somehow. You know? She's a big heavy woman, coarse-looking, and I don't want to hurt their chances, but she smelled like a brewery, and it was a hot day and she wasn't... properly covered up. I guess that kind of thing doesn't mean much on a credit report."

  "It's very helpful, really."

  "I've been noticing what a wonderful tan you've got, Mr. McGee."

  "I just got transferred up here from the Southwest. We get moved around a lot."

  "I guess you must think I'm some kind of a nut; inviting you in and all, and being absolutely all alone here until the bus brings the kids back, but I've got a sixth sense about people, and there's a 16-gauge automatic shotgun standing, in the corner there by the front door and you wouldn't have gotten a foot over the doorstep if I hadn't known right off you were perfectly all right, if I hadn't known I could trust you."

  "I do appreciate that."

  She smiled at me, and her pretty eyes had a slightly glazed look and they seemed to go in and out of focus. Her hand shook as she lifted the coffee cup. As she put it down she took a high quick shallow breath, shuddered, and her tongue hooked at crumbs that weren't there. Under the brightness of the artificial daylight I saw a little sheen of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip. A gentle sweet steam seemed to be rising from her. She hitched her hips on the stool and said in a huskier tone, "Since my littlest one started school and Harry took to being away politicking here and there, these winter days do seem to get awful long for an outgoing-type person like me."

  No trouble diagnosing the problem. She was a little bit scared, and a little bit excited, and she wasn't accustomed to making a pass at a total stranger and she didn't know exactly how to go about it, but Bread Boy had not taken the edge off her and the only thing she could think of was how, without a total loss of all pride and dignity, she could hop back onto that counter top, sans moccasins, stretch jeans, and plain, practical briefs, and get rid of that aching weight, that burden teetering on the brink. She shivered again and gave a high tense artificial laugh and said, "Somebody keeps walking across my grave, I guess."

  I looked at my watch and said, ge
tting up quickly, "Holy Maloney, Mrs. Shottlehauster, this has been so pleasant I lost track of the time. I certainly do appreciate your kindness."

  "Don't you have time for just one more cup of coffee?"

  "I wish I did."

  As I drove away from the impressive farm, I tried to tell myself I was a very decent and restrained chap, quite above the shoddy device of rationalizing it as an act of mercy. But I knew I was lying to myself. I knew from a little sense of heaviness in my loins that had I not had that startled moment of peeping tomism, I might possibly have succumbed to the environment, realizing for the first time the grotesque eroticism of a kitchen deed, amid rich good smells of coffee and pies baking and country woman, as if desire had a curious link with the homely processes of hearty food. A brisk and staunch and amiable little woman, fruitful as the land, her needs earnest and simplified and swiftly and with abundant energy gratified, without residual obligation or accusation. Trot off and set herself to rights and come back with the grace to blush a little, then pay off with a pat, a sisterly kiss, more good coffee and another thickly buttered cinnamon pecan roll.

  So it had not been restraint after all, not a moral hesitation. It had been just my supercilious sense of my own dignity. McGee could not take over the morning chore where Darling Bread Boy had left off. Fastidiousness. A stuffy sense of social stratum, and of course no chance to exercise that jackassy masculine conviction that the lady would not have yielded to anyone less charming and persuasive. Every day, no matter how you fight it, you learn a little more about yourself, and all most of it does is teach humility.

  I knew something about her too. In any other part of the house it would be a horrified No. What do you think I am? The rest of the house gave her the sense of her value, wife of Harry, mother of six, doer of good deeds. The kitchen was her domain. There any little clinging web of guilt could be swiftly scrubbed away, like a thousand other things spilled and broken. Kitchens took care of simple hungers. Stir, mix, bake, and serve, then clean up the litter, polish, and scrub, and it is bright and new again-as if you hadn't cooked a thiog.

  I turned the nose of the car into the third of a mile of muddy ruts that led to the Farley farm. I stopped and stared at the road. I patted the slash pocket of the topcoat, feeling the little lump of the Airweight Bodyguard. Six rounds of 158 grain.38 Special. I traveled with it wrapped in a washcloth and tucked into a slightly oversized soap dish. This will not delude professionals. It escapes casual snoopers.

  I fed the gas evenly and fought the eagerness of the back end to swing itself into the ditch on either side. Mud slapped up into the fender wells, but I kept the momentum all the way up the gradual slope, speedometer saying thirty and thirty-five, car going about eight or ten. Once over the slight rise the speed began to catch up with the reading, and

  I eased off and ran on into the dooryard and found a slightly less soggy place to swing around and aim it back out before stopping. I got out and with the motor dead the wet landscape had a silence like being inside a huge gray drum. The air tasted thick. I could hear the hum of my blood in my ears. There was no smoke at the chimney, no face at the window. An old pickup truck stood beside the house. Road salts had rusted fist-sized holes in it.

  I squelched my way to the front stoop, stepped up, knocked on the door and said, loudly, "Mr. Faaaaarley! Oh Mr. Faaaaaaaarley!"

  Cheery and jolly. Mr. Faaaarley, your kindly insurance agent has come to call, heigh ho. Nothing.

  And so I went around the side of the house prepared to see the empty shed where the salvaged Cadillac had been hidden. I got into mud that grabbed and held. Ruined the shoes. Added ten pounds to each foot and made me walk like a cautious comedy drunk doing the chalk-line bit, and made me sound like a hippo in a swamp. A shed was open. Boards had been ripped away, the door pulled back, hanging at an odd angle from one hinge. It revealed the pale luxury sedan, a front view, the hood up and the doors open.

  "Oh, Mr. Faaaaarley! Yooo hoooo!"

  My voice seemed to wedge itself into the heavy air, then fall into the mud. I got to the shed and stepped inside, stamped my feet, and had considerable cause for thought. Tools lay about. Somebody had undone, with very little finesse, most of Saul Gorba's work. Interior door panels levered off with pry bars. All the seats ripped loose, dumped out, slashed open. Overhead fabric slashed open and pulled down. The trunk was open. The front end of the car rested on the hubs and the back end was jacked up. All the wheels and the spare lay around, tires deflated, pulled halfway off the rims: The big air filter lay in parts nearby. There was a ripe stink of gasoline. The gas tank had been hacksawed open.

  The car was a dead animal. Somebody had opened it up to see what it had been feeding on. There was a sadness about the scene. I could see that Gorba had been working on the car prior to its demolition. He had a set of body and fender tools. He had quart cans of enamel (Desert Dawn Beige), and baking lamps. He had two cans of that plastic guck they use these days to fill the dents. It is cheaper and quicker than beating them out with a rubber mallet and leading the rips and grinding the job to smoothness with a power wheel before sanding and painting. He had packs of sandpaper to smooth the goop down after it hardened.

  He had been making it very pretty. There was some masking tape on the back window yet. Everything in the shed had been given the same complete attention as the car. I squelched my way to the house and peered through the windows. Everything I could see had been pried open, broken open, ripped open, and spilled widely. The kitchen was left the way the Three Stooges leave kitchens.

  Total silence.

  I tried the only other outbuilding with an entire roof on it. The door was open an inch. I pulled it open the rest of the way, using my fingertips on the wooden edge of it, avoiding the metal handle. That kind of silence and that kind of total and ruthless search can teach you a spot of caution.

  The door, squeaked as it opened. There was a gray and dusty daylight in his little work chamber. And an elusive stink.

  He sat on a chair placed against the wall, erect as an obedient child. Hands high, the backs of the hands against the wall. Head up. Can that be you, Mr. Faaarley? How straight you sit! But of course, sir! That leather belt around your chest has been nailed to the studding on either side. And your ankles are wired to the chair legs. And that other band of leather around your forehead has been nailed to the old wood too, with the same kind of galvanized roofing nails, one over each ear, the same ones they drove through your wrists and palms before all the unpleasantness. My goodness, they dropped the cold chisel among your poor teeth, sir. And ripped away your pants for further intimate attentions which have left that faint stink of burning on the silent air. And there is just an ugly crusted paste in one eye socket, poor Mr. Faaaarley, but the other one is whole, a-bulge, and I saw an eye like that when I was very small, and crept on my belly to the edge of the lily pond intending to entice the granddaddy bullfrog to bite on the scrap of red flannel concealing the trout hook.

  From the nightly ga-runk, I thought he would be gigantic, and he was, but I was not prepared to part the last curtain of the pond-side grass and find him not eight inches from my face:

  And, Mr. Farley, then as now, I stared with awe into one froggy yellow eye. It was not the yellowpredator eye of the great blue heron or the osprey, or the intractable black panther. Its fierceness was not as aimed, not as immediate. Like yours it was a golden eye, and like yours it was a bland and dif fuse venom, a final saurian indifference from across the fifty thousand centuries of the days of the great lizards.

  One fearful yellow eye. A terrible hatred, so remote and so knowing and so all encompassing that it translates to mildness, to indifference.

  Oh, they used you badly Farley Saul Gorba.

  I found myself leaning against the outside of the shed, breathing deeply, my face sweaty in the fiftydegree day, and with an acid taste of coffee in the back of my throat.

  I made myself go back in. I made myself touch him. Death had stiffened his body. I
could find no wound that could have caused death. But enough pain can burst the heart or blow the wall out of a blood vessel in the brain. And he had been in the hands of someone who enjoyed that line of work. "Did you tell?" I asked him.

  What do you think? said the stare of the froggy eye.

  It was a good thing he was stiff, perhaps twelve or more hours dead. But I still had the problem of foot tracks, tire tracks, the motel registration, plenty of soil on shoes and car for analysis, testimony by the brawny bus-girl and the itchy farm wife.

  I plodded to my car, only then noticing that the farm truck had been given its share of the attention too.

  I put my hand on the door handle and wondered what it was in the back of my mind that was trying to claw its way out. Something did not make any sense: I had seen some contradiction and I did not know what it was. I moved along the car and, in irritation, thumped a body panel with my fist and felt the metal skin give and spring back...

  The thought got through and it brought me up onto my muddy toes like a bird dog. The body and fender tools and the loving care expended on that Cadillac did not jibe with the use of that plastic goop. And somebody must have had some feeling the money was in the car somewhere. I went back to the car in a muddy noisy lope. I saw canvas work gloves on a nail and put them on. I picked a big screwdriver off the floor and with the metal end played a tune along the curve of a front fender. Pang pang pang pank pock tunk. Grab a rubber mallet. Dig the screwdriver end in. Whack. The hardened goop chipped away. It flew out in large chunks. It exposed, barely visible through heavy pliofilm, an oval etching of General Grant. The packet was almost an inch thick.