Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  It was, all told, 48 miles to Negril Bay. But it took an hour and a half to make the trip because the road, none too good anyway, ran alongside the sea and curved in and out of every little cove. Doug and Terry rode with Grant and Lucky, and “the Spy from Home” and his model with Sir John. Doug and Terry did little but neck and feel each other up in the backseat, and drink some of the beers Grant was carrying for the picnic. When they pulled off the road beside Sir John’s car, and then followed him in through the sand under the half-jungly growth of papaya trees and coconut palms, Grant could see through their back window that “the Spy from Home” and his girl had been doing pretty much the same.

  When they drove past the tiny house, set charmingly on its stilts in the shade of the sandy grove, the ‘farmer’ came out. Sir John stopped his car, got out and towering over the diminutive Negro man so that he had to bend almost double, walked off with him, listened for at least five minutes to whatever it was the ‘farmer’ was saying so smilingly, at one point put his arm over the small man’s shoulder, and then slipped him what could only be a banknote. Grant, sitting impatiently behind the wheel of the second car, wished he wouldn’t take so damned long and wondered how much hatred there might be under the small Negro man’s smiling exterior. If there wasn’t any (and Grant could not be at all sure of that), some organization like CORE or the NAACP or some Jamaican equivalent would be damned sure to agitate to create some, and rightly so, probably. One Negro could not be happy until all were happy. One human could not be happy until all were happy. Maybe. But for a brief moment he felt a keenly cutting envy for the diminutive Negro, with his grove of breadfruit, papaya and coconuts, his ramshackle house on stilts that needed no stove in winter, only protection from the rain, and his front yard of blindingly brilliant sea which from the car Grant could hear rubbing itself softly against his deep sand beach. What more could anybody want out of life? And for that moment Grant would gladly have traded places with him, color and all—provided, of course, he could have Lucky be here with him, he added, somewhat surprising himself. But then that Other Part of his mind said Sure, and if the two of you lived here you’d both drink yourselves to death in a year. Grant had once made liquor in the far Pacific by putting sugar in coconuts and fermenting them in the sun. Sir John came back after taking his own sweet time, and as they drove on in Grant saw in rising echelon four pairs of large white eyes staring at him over the rim of a windowsill from inside the house, and in that dark interior they appeared to have no faces. “What the hell were you doing all that time?” he asked Brace when they stopped and got out.

  “Ahh,” Sir John said, grinning with his horserace. “Have to butter them up a bit, you know. Time to time.”

  “But what was he talking to you about all that time?”

  “Ah. About some life insurance he wants to buy.”

  Grant had never seen such brilliant sunshine in his life, not even in the tropical Pacific. It seemed at least double that of Ganado Bay or Montego Bay, and was so bright, so hot, so white that it turned everything that was out in it no matter how dark or bright the color into a shade of off-white, and at the same time caused everything that was in shadow no matter what color to become dead black. After a while one’s dazzled and sun-scorched eyes ceased to see color at all. This extra-brilliant sunshine was due, or so Sir John Brace maintained, to the fact that this westernmost tip of the island was not, like the rest, on any of the what he called “cloud flyways,” and was never therefore shaded or soothed by them. He was able to point this out by showing them out at sea a long straight line of large white clouds sailing serenely along to the northwest in the general direction of the Cayman Islands like a flotilla of great white sailing ships in line. Grant found this hard to believe but visually, in the sky, it seemed to bear out Sir John’s contention: every cloud over the island seemed to channel itself into this long line moving northwest while on either side of this markedly noticeable line there was not a cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see.

  Under this burning white-hot sunshine was a little four-sided unroofed room made of woven palm fronds and here the girls, murmuring among themselves, changed to their suits. On the beach in the blaze it was as still as death, and Grant with the hot sand burning the bottoms of his bare feet was suddenly made to think of summer Sundays back home in the Midwest and the special feel they seemed to have, in the very air itself, different from other days. The sea lapped at the sand with the tiniest of sounds. By the time the men had changed to their suits Sir John had his rum punch and the beer set up for utilization on a car hood.

  Whether it was the sun, the water, the rum punch itself, or a combination of all three, they were all of them practically falling-down drunk in twenty minutes. The punch, Sir John bragged proudly, steadying himself with a hand on the car door and smiling with slightly glassy eyes at his motley crew, had five kinds of rum in it, some lemon juice and a little molasses syrup. It was even good warm, he maintained, though he had brought plenty of ice. In any case its effect, in this still hot sun, was somewhat like being rapped at the base of the skull with a white-hot sledgehammer. From this state it was only a short step again to nude swimming and sunbathing.

  There was something curiously innocent and childlike about it this time. It was exactly as though a group of children became engaged in doing something bad and giggling about it, something which wasn’t really bad at all, and which they instinctively knew was not bad, but which they also knew their elders would think was bad and would be shocked at. Doug and Terry were the leadoff pair this time, and after they had left their suits on the edge of the sand and swum out a ways “the Spy from Home” and his girl joined them laughing. When Sir John and his model joined the rest, Grant looked over at Lucky.

  They were sitting with their drinks at the round picnic table in the shade of the one big tree where the barbecue had been built. Lucky, who was quite drunk and had already fallen down once in the edge of the water to prove it, stood up and started to take her one-piece suit off.

  “No!” Grant whispered painfully. “No! Don’t!”

  She grinned at him fuzzily, a little red-faced “You want me to do it,” she chided. “I know you do. I can tell. I can smell it. It shows on your face.”

  “It’s true,” Grant said. “I do.” He felt breathless. “But don’t. It would hurt too much.”

  “You’re chicken,” Lucky said. “And I want to do it,” she added stoutly. “I really want to. Matter fact I’d love to do it.”

  “Okay, then. I’m chicken. But I’m asking you not to.”

  Without a word Lucky put the strap back on over her arm and back over the white mark on her shoulder, and sat down and picked up her drink.

  The group of temporary nudists, laughing and splashing, had swum back inshore a ways and were now standing not quite waistdeep in the water, having a water-fight. A group of Jamaican natives in swimsuits with three naked children among them walked past on the beach smiling at the nude water-fighters.

  “They’re only playing,” Grant said. “Having fun. Did you see that?” he nodded at the smiling Jamaicans.

  “I know,” Lucky said. “I know that. You’re funny. You’re very funny. It would hurt too much, you said. But you still wanted me to do it. Still do.”

  Grant didn’t answer this. The water-fight in the shallows had broken up, and Doug and Terry came ashore. Facing it, Doug stood and squinted at the small Negro man’s house twenty yards back in off the beach, then turned around and lay down and stretched out on a blanket with Terry stretched out beside him. The other four came splashing in and sat down with them. From the lack of conspicuous difference between the models’ bottoms and the rest of them it was plain that they all were used to a lot of nude sunbathing. None of the men sported erections, Grant noted. Nor did he. Curiously enough it was just the reverse, actually.

  Beside him Lucky suddenly got up and walked down into the water. She lay down and half-crawled, half-paddled out a short distance, all of her under
but her head. She seemed to wriggle around a little bit, Grant watching her, and then suddenly stood up, her arms over her head in a classic ballet pose. She had taken off her suit and was completely nude. The water seemed to pour off her in slow motion as it were, and then there she was in all her glorious sensuality, the lovely white breasts and lean, rounded hip making the other, skinnier girls look mechanical and asexual. Her arms still up and not quite kneedeep in the water, she did a series of classic balloné fouetté, a real pas de bourré directly toward them, all beautifully done. It was a movement which, forcing the raised leg out at a complete right angle to the standing leg as it did, before the little leap, gave the impression of opening up the crotch completely, and she must have chosen it deliberately. There was a hush of stillness from the shore as she did the pas de bourré. The champagne-colored hair had not gotten wet and it flashed about her as she moved like white gold. Then she turned and dived under back to where her suit was and with only her head above water put it back on.

  From the shore there came a burst of applause and yells.

  When she got back to Grant she was both laughing and blushing. Taking his arm in one hand she kissed him on the mouth. “Are you mad at me?”

  “Mad at you! God you’re beautiful! God I love you! It was beautiful!”

  “Make you a little hot?”

  “Hot! Wait’ll I get you home.”

  And yet, somewhere way down underneath, he was angry at her. At the same time he had never been so sexually excited in his life; the heat of it was so great he was afraid it would melt his ears, ignite his hair, and burn the top of his head off. Sometimes she seemed to understand him better than he understood himself.

  At the blanket Sir John Brace uncoiled his long lank nude frame and stood up, and smiling toothily and a little ruefully said, “Well, I don’t think I really ought to go about my cooking chores dressed like this,” and went over and put his trunks back on before going to the barbecue. Slowly the others casually redonned their suits, and that was the end of it.

  It was not however the end of the picnic, or the end of the drinking. Even the delicious hamburgers and steaks Sir John cooked over the driftwood-smoky fire could not sober them up from Sir John’s punch. With a great, hectic, selfdestructive but unbrookable drive that Grant for one could not understand or calculate the cause of, Sir John ladled out more and more rum punch from what appeared to be an inexhaustible supply.

  The “great marvelous reef” turned out to be a bust. When Grant swam out to it with his mask and snorkel, he found it consisted of little coral heads about three feet high and only six feet below the surface. Only a few sergeant-majors and a few tiny butterfly fish inhabited it. As a diver, even as a snorkler, Sir John was obviously below the level of even the rankest amateur. So the aqualung stayed in the car trunk again. Anyway, he was too drunk to try to dive seriously. He was too drunk to do just about anything. Then when he thought about Carol Abernathy he reached for another drink.

  The sun was so strong and dried them out so much that after a couple of hours of it they actually felt toasted—not sunburnt, but toasted, like dry toasted bread. Once during the long hot afternoon Grant fell asleep on the blanket with his arm around Lucky in the shade of the tree, and had again the nightmare he had had before. Once again he had speared the same big fish and it had gone under the same big ledge. Once again pride would not let him let go of the gun, the pistolgrip of which he could feel so plainly in his hand. The surface beckoned. Then his last air burst out of him and he watched the last big bubbles of it rising toward the shimmering, quicksilver, undulating water-sky. His last breath. He woke with a strangled cry.

  “What was that?” Lucky asked.

  “I had a bad dream. That’s all.”

  “What kind of a bad dream?”

  “Oh, nothing much. I dreamed I shot a big fish and can’t get him up but I won’t let go of the gun. I drown.” He laughed suddenly. “I’ve had it before.”

  “God!” Lucky said looking at him strangely. “If it makes you have dreams like that, why do you do it?”

  “Why,” Grant said tonelessly, like an echo. Then he felt irritated. “I’m not makin it my profession. It’s not something I’m gonna do all my life. It’s just something I want to learn about, that’s all.”

  Then thinking about Carol Abernathy he reached for another glass of punch.

  It showed up on the way home. All of them feeling crisp all over, they left just before sundown, and in the first little town they passed through Grant ran into a street island. The left front wheel bounced up over the curbing, jolting them all but causing no damage. The jolt was enough to wake up Doug and Terry who were asleep with their arms around each other in the backseat. When he saw what it was, Doug laughed raucously.

  Lucky waited to speak until she was sure they were asleep again. “I really don’t know what’s wrong with you, but something is. All of you. Something terrible is hanging over all of us, and I’m scared. You’ve got to get me out of here and away from these people. We’ve just got to get out of here, Ron!”

  “You’re right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. And we will. On the other hand, that could have happened to anybody. What the hell do they want to put a goddamned street island in a place like that for anyway in this little burg?”

  But he slowed down. Sir John, at least as drunk as he was, was miles away in front ahead of them. He didn’t care. By the time they reached Montego Bay he had driven himself sober with the aid of a bottle of beer Lucky opened for him. “Jesus God, that punch!” he said as they pulled into town. And with only a quick sandwich to sustain them they packed what little they had and left for Ganado Bay that same evening.

  Doug did not go with them. Smiling at Terry September, he said he had decided to stay on until the girls left when their job was over. Maybe Terry would stay down another day or two.

  So the two of them made the night trip alone.

  18

  SHE COULDN’T REMEMBER ever having made such a wild insane night ride before. The car winged along between the sea and the mountains almost as if they were actually airborne in bumpy air. Everything was flavored with a weird hangover quality. The only thing remotely like it in her experience was that crazy night out in California years ago when she almost ran down Buddy Landsbaum with his own limousine. They were all drunk that time too. ’Course she and Ron were sober now. But they were sobered up into that dehydrated, over-nervous fatigue and interior jiggling, from Sir John’s rum punch, which gave the same distorted grotesque scary effect as if you were still overdrunk.

  She spent most of the trip huddled up and half-lying down in the front seat, pretending to be asleep. So she wouldn’t have to talk to Grant.

  She knew something about him now that she hadn’t known before. She didn’t know what it was exactly that she knew, but she knew she knew it. And knew she knew how to use it. He wasn’t invulnerable, after all. And she had made up her mind that someday she would make him pay.

  Pay for everything. For leaving her in New York like that, for making her pull that silly nude bathing stunt and embarrassing her this afternoon, for bringing her down here into this stupid drunken weekend with that bunch of creepy sick drunks. Make him pay, most of all, for having made her fall in love with him. That most of all she would make him pay for. For the first time since she had met him Lucky again felt strong, self-sustaining. And she knew she could make him marry her. Too. No question about it. Easy as pie. She could make him do anything.

  At the same time she felt more in love with him than ever, with a greater depth of tenderness. The poor slob. The poor slave. She had always wanted her very own slave. She felt tough and hard, even conquering, after this afternoon, and at the same time she felt a great pity for him. How could you respect your slave?

  There he sat beside her behind the wheel, as solid as any rock, as dependable as any Gibraltar insurance company, his face lit dimly by the dashboard, no idea in his mind at all of what she had in store fo
r him. She loved him more. He believed in things. The idiot. Or thought he did. Even though he professed to be cynical. Oh, would she hurt him.

  He was probably the best road driver she had ever ridden with, except maybe for her Daddy. She had learned that on the trip to Florida. And now he herded the big rented convertible along the winding, bumpy roads like some master rider totally in control of his mount, pushing hard, but never pushing beyond capacity or safety point. Yes, she’d make him pay all right.

  Then slowly the mood washed itself away. He had insisted on leaving the top down, to keep himself awake he said, although it was cold. She huddled down into her coat. Under the thin fingernail moon, which seemed to darken things rather than lighten them, the ocean loomed on their left, a flat black expanse of potential danger, while on their right the black humps of jungled hills and whispering black fields of cane twelve feet high threatened them also. From time to time they passed clusters of shacks along the road where the field hands lived, almost always unlighted, and heard guitar chords; were taunted by murmuring voices, rich black laughter. Once or twice black men jumped out into the light of the headlights brandishing machetes and shouted at them. It was as if the night, falling, had released the primitive, the jungle, the Africa from what in daytime were only politely murmuring stock figures. While along the way the towns slept, deadly. It seemed to Lucky that only the bright double beam of the headlights, running on before them, kept back total primitivity, primevalism from engulfing them; kept civilization alive. She felt terror at the thought of them suddenly extinguished. At least out there in Hollywood that time what happened, happened in civilized surroundings. Not drowsy at all, huddled in her warm camelshair coat, she peeked up once at Grant and her mind settled itself into a spicy luxury of secret remembering.

  Buddy had invited her and Leslie to fly out to the Coast with him, his expense, where he had to meet with Don Celt about a film they were going to do together in Canada. Yes, Don Celt! He who was directing Ron’s new play! She had only been fucking Buddy about two weeks then. Yes, fucking him, she repeated to herself deliciously, aware that Grant thought she was asleep, could not know what she was thinking. It had seemed a lark to both of them, both girls, at the time. But when they got out there it had gone to hell, fast. She had known Buddy was tight. But, only having gone with him for two weeks, just how tight she hadn’t realized. This showed up immediately on the Coast. If there was anything she couldn’t stand it was somebody who was tight with money.