by Jerry eBooks
“What do you mean?”
“He came around yesterday. He was a little drunk. He scared Betty. He knew I wouldn’t be there. He came around and he scared her. The Sandersons were there. She got loose of him and went over where they were. He kept hanging around. She had to stay with them most of the day. He’s got her nervous now. You tell him for me if he makes one more little bit of a move toward her at any time, I’ll sure kill him stone dead.” He turned around and walked out with that funny look still on his face. It was the most I ever heard him say all at one time.
At noon I went over to the bar where John Lash was working. He’d just come on. I got a beer and he rung it up and slapped my change down. He seemed a little nervous.
“Get anything yesterday?”
“Lew got a big ‘cuda. Croy got some nice grouper. Where were you?”
“Oh, I had things to do.”
“You better not have any more things like that to do.”
He looked at me and put his big hands on the bar and put his face closer to mine. “What kind of a crack is that?”
“Don’t try to get tough with me. You messed around Betty Danton yesterday. You scared her. She told Croy. Croy came in this morning and gave me a message to give you. He says you bother her in any other kind of way at any time and he’s going to kill you.” It sounded funny to say it like that. As if I was in a movie.
John Lash just stared at me out of those little hot eyes of his. “What kind of talk is that? Kill me? With all the come-on that blonde of his has been giving me? Why don’t he come here and tell me that? You know damn well why he didn’t come here. By God, I’d have thrown him halfway out to the road.”
“He told me to tell you. It sounded like he meant it.”
“I’m scared to death. Look at me shake.”
I finished my beer and put the glass down. “See you,” I said.
“I’ll be along the next time.”
I walked out. One thing about that Lash, he didn’t scare worth a damn. I would have been scared. One of those fellows who do a lot of talking wouldn’t scare me much. But the quiet ones, like Croy, they bottle things up.
It was nearly three o’clock when Betty came into the garage. She had on a white dress and when she stood there it made the old garage with all the grease and dirt look darker than ever before. She is a girl who looks right at you. Her eyes were worried. I wiped my hands and lit a cigarette and went over to her.
“Dobey, did Croy talk to you?”
“He was in.”
“What did he say?”
“Wouldn’t he tell you what he said?”
“He just said he gave you a message for John Lash. What was it, Dobey? He won’t tell me. He acts so funny. I’m scared, Dobey.”
“He told me to tell Lash if he messed around you he was going to kill him. He said Lash scared you.”
“Well, he did scare me, sort of. Because he was drunk. But the Sandersons were there. So it was all right. Croy says I have to come along with you next time. What did Lash say?”
“What do you think he said? You can’t scare him off that way. I don’t think anybody ought to go out next time, Betty. I think we ought to call it off. I think it’s going to be a mess.”
“Croy says we’re going. He’s acting funny. We’ll have to go. You’ve got to come along too, Dobey. Please.”
3.
That’s the way it was. It was something you couldn’t stop. Like one of those runaway trains in the old movie serials. Picking up speed as it went. I had time during the week to get hold of the other guys and tell them what was up. I don’t know now why we didn’t form a sort of delegation and go see John Lash and tell him to move along, off the Keys. There would have been enough of us. But there was something about Lash. Something wild and close to the surface. You could have done all that to a normal guy, but he wasn’t normal. I’m not saying he was crazy.
Anyway, I loaded the little Jap automatic I had brought back from Saipan and put it in the paper sack with my lunch. That’s the way I felt about the day.
Dusty and Lew and I were the first ones to arrive. We put the gear in the old tub. Lew had gotten his new Arbalete gun with the double sling and we hefted it and admired it and then we talked about maybe getting our own compressor some time for the two double-tank lungs. I crushed a damp cigarette and rubbed the glass on my face mask. Two more of the regulars arrived. There was the feel of trouble in that day. A different shimmer in the water. A different blue in the sky. A car door slammed and pretty soon Croy and Betty came around the corner of the fish house and down to the dock, laden with gear. For a time I guess we were all hoping that John Lash wouldn’t show. It would have been a good day then, like the days before he came along and joined us.
But as hope grew stronger and Dusty started to fool with the old engine, John Lash came down to the dock, walking cat-light, carrying his sack of gear and lunch and beer, his personal Saetta gun in his other hand, looking slimmer and frailer than it was because it was John Lash who carried it, walking toward us, sun picking sweat-lights off his brown shoulders.
I expected it right then and there. I saw Betty hunch herself a little closer to Croy and start to put her hand on his arm and then change her mind. But John Lash came aboard, saying a lot of loud hellos, banging his gear down, opening the ice chest to pile his cans of beer in there.
He didn’t seem to pay any special attention to Betty, or Croy either. He sat on the rail back near Dusty at the wheel while we headed out and down the coast. It was enough to make you want to relax, but you couldn’t. The water had a greased look. We had agreed to try Gilman’s Reef. There is good coral there, and rock holes. I don’t know whether we were trying to keep a lid on trouble, but the other five of us did more talking than usual, more kidding around. But laughter had a flat sound across the water. Lew checked the Aqualungs. I had me a beer.
When we got close I went up and stood on the bow and had Dusty bring it up to a place that looked right. I let the anchor line slide through my hands. It hit bottom in twenty-five feet, which was about right. We drifted back and it caught and we swung and steadied there, about twenty feet off the reef shallows. No trouble had started and it didn’t look like there would be any. Croy and Lew went down first, Lew with a lung and Croy with a mask only, just to take a look around. I noticed that when Croy lowered himself easily into the water he glanced at Betty and then back to where John Lash was working his feet into the fins. He ducked under and one fin swirled the water as he went down.
John Lash got his fins on and flapped forward to where Betty sat on the rail. He laughed out loud and wrapped a big brown fist in that blonde hair of hers and turned her face upward and kissed her hard on the mouth. She struggled and clawed at him and fell to her hands and knees when he released her.
“Hard to get, aren’t you, blondie?” he asked.
Dusty said, “Cut it out, Lash. Cut it out!”
“This is nothing to you, Dusty. Keep out of it! This is me and Betty.”
“Get away from me,” she said. Her eyes were funny and her mouth had a broken look. I picked up the paper sack and put my hand inside and got hold of the automatic. I couldn’t tell what he was going to try to do. He stood spread-legged on the deck watching the water. Betty moved away from him toward the stern, beyond me and Dusty.
Croy broke water and shoved his mask up. He was a dozen feet from the boat.
John Lash stood there and laughed down at him and said, “I just kissed your woman, Danton. I understand you got ideas of making something out of it. I got a message from you.”
Croy took one glance at Betty. He brought the Arbalete spear gun up almost off-hand and fired it directly at John Lash’s middle. I heard the zing and slap of the rubber slings, heard Betty’s scream, heard John Lash’s hard grunt of surprise as he threw himself violently to one side. I don’t know how he got away from it. But he did. The spear hit the end of the nylon and fell to the water on the far side of the boat. John Lash recovered
his balance. He stared at Croy as though he were shocked. He roared then and went off the side in a long fiat dive, hurling himself at Croy. There was a splash of water, a flash of brown arms and then they were both gone. I got a glimpse of them under the water as they sank out of sight. Betty screamed again, not as loud.
4.
Nobody was set to go down. We all started grabbing gear at once. I went off the side about the same moment as Dusty, and at the last moment I had snatched up John Lash’s Saetta gun. It was cocked and I don’t know what I expected to do with it but I took it. I went down through the deepening shades of green, looking for them. I saw movement and cut over toward it, but it was Lew wearing the lung. He saw me and spread his arms in a gesture that meant he hadn’t spotted anything worth shooting. He didn’t know what was going on. I motioned him to go up. I guess I looked as though I meant it. He shrugged and headed up.
I looked hard, but I couldn’t find them and I could tell by the way my chest felt that it was nearly time to head up. I took it as long as I could. I thought I saw movement below me and to the right but I was close to blacking out and I went up. Dusty was hanging on the side of the boat. Betty stood staring down into the water. I knew from her face that they hadn’t come up. I took deep breaths and turned and went down again and got part way down when I saw them. John Lash with a look of agony on his face, was working his way up, kicking hard, one hand holding Croy by the waistband of his trunks. Croy was loose in the water. I went over and got hold of Croy by the wrist. I fired the spear off to the side so the gun would float up. Lash was having a hard time of it. I got Croy up and we got him over the side and put him face down on the bottom and Lew, who had the lung and tanks off, began to work on him. Somebody behind me helped John Lash aboard. Dusty had to grab Betty and pull her away from Croy so Les could use the artificial respiration without her getting in his way.
She turned against Dusty and she was crying. Those were the sounds. The small noises she made, and John Lash’s labored breathing, and the rhythmic slap and creak of the respiration.
“Tried . . . to kill me,” Lash said. “You . . . you saw it. Then . . . tried to drown me. Tried to hold me even . . . after he’d passed out.”
Nobody answered him. The boat moved in the offshore swell. Loose gear rattled. Croy retched and coughed. Les continued until Croy began to struggle weakly. Les moved back then and Croy rolled over, closing his eyes against the sun.
Betty dropped to her knees beside him saving words that did not make sentences. Croy raised his head. He looked at her and then pushed her aside, gently. He got to his knees. I tried to help him up but he refused the help. He got to his feet with an enormous effort. He stood unsteadily and looked around until he saw John Lash. As soon as he saw Lash he bent and picked up a loose spear. He held it by the middle, the muscles of his arm bunching.
John Lash moved quickly. He got, up and said, “Wait! Hold it! Croy, wait . . .” Dusty tried to grab Croy but he moved quickly. The spear tip gashed John Lash’s arm as he tried to fend it off, and as Croy drew back to thrust again, John Lash hit him flush in the face with one of those big brown fists. Croy bounced back and hit the engine hatch and rebounded to fall heavily and awkwardly, unconscious.
Betty reached him and turned him and sat, his head in her lap, arm curled protectively around his head, murmuring to him. Lew wet the end of a towel and gave it to her. She wiped the blood from his mouth and looked at John Lash and then the rest of us with cold hate. “Why didn’t you stop him? Why are you letting him do this to Croy?”
“I had to hit him!” John Lash said, his voice a half-octave higher than usual. “You saw what he was trying to do. Why didn’t you guys stop him?”
Croy’s mouth puffed rapidly. He mumbled something. Dusty started the engine. “We better get back. You want to get the anchor up, Dobey?”
I broke it free and hauled it in, coiling the line. When I moved back I saw that Croy was sitting up. Betty was holding onto his arm. She was saying, with a gradually increasing edge in her voice, “No, darling. No. No please, darling.”
But Croy was looking beyond her, looking at John Lash. Lash was trying to grin. It wasn’t a grin as much as it was just a sort of twist he was wearing on his mouth. He’d look at Croy and then look away. Croy got up then with Betty holding onto him. He lurched over toward the rail and grabbed one of the gaffs. Lash came back up onto his feet quickly and said, “Grab him!”
Croy shook Betty loose. Lew and I grabbed Croy. It was like grabbing hard rubber. He lowered his head and butted Lew over the rail. Dusty swung the boat to keep the prop clear of Lew. It made me lose my balance. As I staggered Croy rapped me across my shins with the handle end of the gaff and hot stars went off behind my eyes from the sudden pain of it. When I could see again I saw him going for Lash with the gaff. They were poised for a moment, muscles like they were cut out of stone, both holding onto the long gaff. Then John Lash, with his greater strength, hurled Croy back toward the stern again. Croy fell, harder than before, but he hadn’t been hit.
“Keep him off me!” Lash yelled. “Keep him off me!”
Croy got slowly and clumsily back to his feet and started back toward Lash. I was set to take another grab at Croy. Lew was climbing aboard. The other two guys were having no part of it. They were plain scared. Just as I was about to grab Croy he put his weight on his left foot and went down. I could see the ankle puffing visibly. He never took his eyes off John Lash. He had fallen near his gear. He fumbled and came out with a fish knife with a cork handle. Holding it in his hand he began to crawl toward the bow, toward John Lash again, the handle thumping against the cockpit boards every time he put his right hand down. I fell on his arm. I could hear Lash yelling. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I got Croy’s wrist and managed to twist the knife out of his hand. Lew had him around the middle. We hauled him over and tried to sit on him. He kept struggling with stubborn, single-minded strength. Once he broke free and started crawling again toward Lash, puffed lips pulled back from bloody teeth, but we got him again.
Dusty helped that time and one of the other guys and we held him and tried to talk sense into him, but he kept on struggling. We finally got heavy nylon line around his wrists and tied his arms behind him. We thought that was going to be enough, but even with his hands like that he managed to get on his feet and, limping badly, try to get at Lash. Dusty put a length of the anchor line around the engine hatch and we tied him there around his chest, sitting on the litter of gear and water and smashed sandwiches and cans of beer, staring at John Lash and fighting the heavy line constantly.
5.
Once he was tied up, Betty kneeling beside him, trying to soothe him, John Lash lighted a cigarette. His hands shook. He grinned. “He get like that often?” he asked “Look at him. He still wants to get at me.”
Croy’s shoulders bulged as he fought the rope. Lash kept glancing at him. We were all breathing hard. Dusty examined skinned knuckles. “I never see him like that, not that bad. Old Croy he gets an idea in his head, you can’t get it out. No sir.”
“He’ll get over this, won’t he? When he cools off.”
“He’s not going to cool off at all,” Dusty said. “Not one little bit. Tomorrow, the next day, it’ll be just the same.”
“What am I supposed to do then?” Lash asked.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” Dusty said. “You got to either kill him or he’s got it in his mind he’s going to kill you. Known him twenty years and he’s never gone back on his word one time. Or his daddy before him.”
Lash licked his lips. I watched him. I saw him sitting there, nervous. It was something he’d never run into. It was something I guess few men ever run into in their lifetime. I could see him wishing he’d never made any sort of a pass at Betty.
Croy fought the rope, doggedly, constantly, sweat running down his face.
John Lash lighted another cigarette. “He’ll get over it,” he said unconvincingly.
“I wo
uldn’t want to bet much on that,” I said.
There was that big John Lash sitting there in the sun, a whole head and forty-fifty pounds bigger than little Croy Danton. And without the faintest idea in the world as to what to do about it. Either way, there didn’t seem to be any kind of an out for John Lash.
“He’s nuts. You people are all nuts down here.” Lash said.
I sensed what was forming in his mind. I said, “When we dock we’ll see if we can hold him right here for about an hour. You ought to pack up and take off.”
“Run from a character like him?” Lash said.
Croy’s arms came free suddenly and he tried to shove the line up off his chest. His wrists were bloody where the nylon had punished them. Three of us jumped him and got his wrists tied again. He didn’t make a sound. But he fought hard. Betty kept trying to quiet him down, talking gentle, her lips close to his ear. But you could see that for Croy there were two people left in the world. Him and John Lash.
It took about forty minutes to get back in. Nobody talked. I didn’t like to watch Croy. It was a sort of thing I have seen in Havana at the cock fights. I hear it is like that, too, at the bull fights. A distillation, I guess you would call it, of violence. The will to kill. Something that comes from a sort of crazy pride, a primitive pride, and once you have started it, you can’t turn it off.
It was easy to see that John Lash didn’t want to look at him either. But he had to keep glancing at him to make sure he wasn’t getting loose. During that forty minutes John Lash slowly unraveled. He came apart way down in the middle of himself where it counted. I don’t think any of us would say he was a coward. He wasn’t yellow. But this was something he couldn’t understand. He’d never faced it before and few men ever face it in their lifetime. To Lash I guess Croy wasn’t a man any more. He was a thing that wanted to kill him. A thing that lusted to kill him so badly that even defenseless it would still keep coming at him.