Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  In one way, despite the small malicious triumph, she was sorry Letta had told her. It was better not to know that kind of thing about your friends and acquaintances. She had liked Letta Bonham from the start: an innocent, not very hip, sweet-natured girl. And when Letta started offering confidences, she hadn’t known how to stop her. Finally the Jamaican girl had broken down and cried. Of course being loaded on all that beer had had a lot to do with all of it.

  “You’re a pretty sophisticated girl, Lucky,” was how she began. It was between hands in the gin game and Lucky was shuffling. Letta had just gotten them beer. “You—you know a a lot about men. More than I do.”

  “Well,” Lucky smiled. “Maybe. Maybe and maybe not. Sometimes I wonder if any woman ever knows anything about any man.” She yawned nervously. “What time is it?”

  “Ten after twelve,” Letta said. “They should be finished and home before very long.”

  “God, this waiting drives me crazy. Do you have to wait like this for Al all the time?”

  “All the time,” Letta said. “But some jobs like this one are worse. I didn’t know it would be like that when I started. But now I love him. But there’s more. Let me ask you. My husband won’t sleep with me.”

  “Well—” Lucky said, completely at a loss. She felt logy and half-drunk from all the beer. “What do you mean, he won’t sleep with you?”

  “He won’t make love to me,” Letta said anxiously. “He. won’t—He can’t make love to me. He can’t—get it up, have an erection, you know? I think.”

  “Does he try?”

  “Well, no. He doesn’t. As if he’s afraid. Ashamed. But sometimes when we’re in the bed I touch him. You know? It’s always soft. He just turns over away on his side. And yet I’m sure he loves me.”

  “Well, was he hurt in the war? Or anything like that?” Lucky said, feeling foolish.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. He used to make love to me when we were first married and before. But now for two years he hasn’t touched me at all. And I don’t know what I’m going to do. I thought maybe you could tell me what to do to—to make him excited.”

  Jesus, Lucky thought. There was a problem for you. A real one, this one had.

  “You see,” Letta Bonham said, falling a little bit into the Jamaican lilt in her anxiety, “I only have one boy before Al, and I didn’t like it. But with Al, I like it with heem. I discover I am very passionate girl. And now I just don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t talk to him about it. He won’t talk about it.”

  “Did you ever try getting him drunk?”

  “Drunk. Sober. Makes no difference. And I don’t know what is wrong with me. What I’m doing wrong. I thought maybe you could tell me.”

  Despite the girl’s heartache Lucky suddenly wanted to laugh, thinking of the huge Bonham and the tiny lightboned Letta. Maybe he’s afraid of mashing you, she wanted to say but bit her tongue.

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you all this,” Letta Bonham said. “But you’re a very sophisticated girl. And I had to talk to somebody. I can only assume that I’m just not exciting to him anymore. But I don’t know what to do to make myself more exciting.”

  “It’s hard to tell what excites everybody,” Lucky said. “But you look exciting enough to me.” And she did, with her full breasts, slim legs and lovely hips. “Perfume?” Lucky said. “No cold cream at night? Don’t put your hair up in curlers?” It all sounded ridiculous.

  “I’ve tried all that,” Letta Bonham said.

  “You’ve got yourself a problem,” Lucky said. “And I don’t know what to tell you that could help you.”

  Letta Bonham was looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. “You don’t think it could maybe be because I’m colored? Part Negro?”

  Lucky was brought back, shocked now—really deeply— and angry. “Of course not!” Then she asked herself why not? “He would never have married you in the first place if it was that, would he?”

  “I don’t know,” Letta Bonham said. “We Jamaicans don’t think much about that down here where almost everybody has some colored blood except a few English people. A touch of the tar brush, was what my father used to say and laugh. But Al’s American. I don’t know.”

  “Certainly not!” Lucky said furiously. “And Al’s not from the South. He’s from New York State somewhere, isn’t he?”

  “New Jersey,” Letta Bonham said.

  “And I’ve watched him,” Lucky said. “He doesn’t have any sense of discrimination toward colored people. I’m sure it can’t be that.” She had to believe that.

  “Then I don’t know what it is,” Letta Bonham said. “I’m sure he doesn’t go out with other women. That I couldn’t stand. Under the circumstances.” It was just at this point that she broke down. “And I want to have babies!” she wept suddenly. “I want children.”

  “Every woman has a right to have children,” Lucky said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She didn’t know anything else to do but put her arms around the sobbing girl and pat her head. Finally, not knowing what more to do, she went and got them two more beers. And after a few minutes just exactly as if nothing at all had happened or been said, they returned to their gin game.

  All of this, more or less in detail, she told to Grant in their grubby little room after she had finished packing them, watching his face for reaction. She could pretty well guess now, knowing Grant as well as she knew him (but did she really know him?), what kind of a reaction to expect from him: one of embarrassment, and an attempt to minimize or ignore. And that was exactly what she got.

  An embarrassed, strangely closed look on his face, he apparently didn’t want to look her in the eye. “Well, they’ve got themselves a piece of bad luck, it sounds like. But I don’t see what that has to do with us. We’re leaving here tonight. Anyway, we both know lots of people all over who’ve got that problem? It’s not all that horrible, or new.”

  “It has to do with us in that you’re putting your life in this man’s hands every day, and at the same time making for yourself a hero out of him. It has to do with us in that Al Bonham dislikes me intensely for some reason, and I’m your girl. He’s— He’s— It’s actually true— He’s jealous of me with you.”

  “Aw, come on,” Grant said. He was obviously talking about all this unwillingly. “I do know he’s not impotent with other women, anyway.”

  “You actually saw him screw a woman!” Lucky said.

  “Certainly not. Of course not. But I did see him go out with not one, but two hot-looking colored gals from The Neptune Bar in his car one night when I was first down here. He wanted me to go with them. And he sure wasn’t going out to just ride them around in his car.”

  “God! You better never tell Letta that.”

  “I don’t intend to tell anybody anything,” Grant said. “It’s none of my business. And I don’t intend to get mixed up in it. He wanted me to go out with them that night; but I didn’t because of you.” He plainly hoped that that would maybe soften her up a little, at least momentarily. But it didn’t. Lucky had one further trump card up her sleeve.

  “Are you thinking of putting money into this schooner deal he’s fixed up with Orloffski and this other man, Finer?”

  Grant was completely surprised. “Well, yes. I have been thinking a little bit about it,” he admitted reluctantly. “Not much money. It would be nice to own a part of a boat that you could come down here to take free diving vacations on.”

  “Then don’t you think that what I just told you is important information you should have before you make that final decision?”

  “Yes, I guess it is,” he said unwillingly. “But I don’t really see what it has to do with it. And it’s embarrassing.—And anyway,” he suddenly burst out angrily, “we’re not married yet, goddamn it!”

  Lucky was smart enough to recognize his angry outburst for just what it was: an angry outburst, and to ignore the implied insult that might have been in it but in fact was not because Grant, stung, ha
d just simply hollered out. She remained silent in front of him.

  “I’m sorry I said that,” he said after a moment. “But you—” He paused. “How did you know I was thinking of buying in a bit on the schooner? How could you know?”

  “One of my little intuitions,” Lucky said. She grinned and came and put her arms around him. “I love you. You may be a drunk, and a complete jerk about half the time, but I don’t even care about that.” She rubbed her head against him, feeling him, “Anyway, that’s one problem you certainly don’t have, isn’t it?”

  Grant, holding her and feeling that lush body against him and sensing again that peculiar and nourishing electrical contact their two skins had whenever they touched bare, and which she had told him she felt also, wondered with mild surprise again at just how much the past few days he had come to accept the fact that their marriage would take place. Proximity. Proximity, and that electric nourishment. Was that all it was after all, in the end? Love? “Come on,” he said; “let’s get back up there to the house before they miss us.”

  As they went out, him carrying the bag, and he paid the Jamaican woman for the extra night, he could not resist adding: “But you should really have seen Bonham on that dive today. He was really marvelous.”

  “And you went off to eat lunch with him without even telephoning me that you were safe,” Lucky countered mildly.

  “Ah, honey. It was only another ten or fifteen minutes. And they all wanted to stop.”

  “It wasn’t a very thoughtful thing to do,” Lucky said. Then she hugged his arm. “Anyway, we’re leaving. We’re leaving this awful place and these awful people. That’s all I care about.”

  But later on, when they had all congregated back at The Neptune Bar, Grant thought about it. It would have been such an easy thing to telephone her and just let her know it was over and they were all right. Why hadn’t he? Partly he was embarrassed to, after how easy the dive had been. But mainly it was because they were all so excited over the dive and wanted to talk about it. And he and Doug were excited over Bonham and Bonham’s part in it. He had spent that fifteen or twenty minutes’ time talking to Doug about Bonham, he remembered. And it had been thoughtless.

  But now as they all sat in The Neptune again still one more time, laughing and drinking and toasting each other because now the finality of leaving was really on them, they were really leaving, Grant could not keep from watching Bonham. There really was a difference in his attitude toward Lucky, though it was so tiny a difference that it was almost not noticeable unless you were looking expressly for it. His smiles toward her were always a bit more bitter, a bit more cynical than his other smiles, and any remarks he addressed to her more wry, more knowing in some odd tiny way. It was as if he were saying to himself: this gal is going to try to take my new friend away from me; and what’s more she’s going to succeed; because it’s sex. He seemed to have adopted a slightly more long-suffering air. It was as if he wanted to say to Grant. “Why can’t these goddamned women leave us men alone just once in a while, with our own interests they don’t understand?”, but was being too polite to do it. And whenever Grant did look at him, he could not get out of the forefront of his mind what Lucky had told him his wife had said about the big man.

  It was ridiculous and silly that it should color the way he saw the big diver and his feats, color what he felt about him, he had been around long enough and was sophisticated enough to take such things in stride, but color it it did. Being unable to make it with his wife didn’t necessarily make him more unmanly, but it did make him more neurotic. Grant had always thought of him as essentially an uncomplicated totally straightforward type of man, unlike himself, and that had been one of his main hopes in him, one of his main admirations. And now it appeared that he was as nutty as the rest, and worse off than some. As Lucky was so fond of saying: “Sometimes I think the whole of the United States is totally and completely sexually sick, sick to danger point.” Well, it had been one of Grant’s main themes all his life, in all his work. And now here was good old simple, uncomplicated Al Bonham in it too, up to his balls.

  It was just about at this point that Bonham, with his dumb look of curiously smug sexual propriety, took Grant off by himself to give him his rendition of why he placed the panties back on Anna Rachel: the wife and four kids back home. They had all had quite a bit to drink by this time, and Grant didn’t know what to say.

  “I suppose there’ll be a lot of gossip about it anyway, hunh?” he said finally after they had discussed it all.

  “Sure, but at least this way they won’t know, will they?” Bonham said.

  “Well, I guess from all I’ve heard about Anna Rachel, they’ll still be able to guess pretty close. Won’t they?”

  “But they won’t have proof,” Bonham said. “Anyway I think I did the right thing, don’t you?”

  “Even at the risk of your life?”

  Bonham made a throw-away gesture. “It wasn’t that dangerous.”

  “It could have been.”

  “Well, it didn’t. And I figure I owed her that Don’t you think I did the right thing?” he said again.

  “I guess you did, Al,” Grant said, and then saw that this was simply not enough for Bonham. He pretended to think. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure you did the right thing, Al,” he added.

  Back at the big table, while they were settling up the bill (which Grant and Doug paid), Big Al proposed the last toast: “To your trip, both of you! May it be as much fun for you both as this part of it has been for us!” Then he smiled that curious smile at Lucky. “I got to admit I hate to see you go. This guy’s been the best customer I’ve had in a long, long time.”

  It was almost as if the big man seemed to have sensed something about what they knew about him. Could he have guessed that Letta might have told Lucky what she in fact had told her about him? Surely not Grant thought. But he seemed to have on his face that look Grant had seen there before when bad things happened, the set pained look of a man walking down a long, long street in a driving rainstorm and knowing there was nothing for it but to go on, go on and get wet.

  It was at the airport that Grant missed his camera, his expensive Exacta V that he had not felt quite rich enough to have William make a case for.

  He had gone around to the back where Orloffski was unloading all their gear from Bonham’s car, thinking it might be there though he always carried it with him. But it wasn’t there either.

  “You haven’t seen my camera by any chance, have you?” he asked the bulletheaded Pole.

  “Yeah. It was on top of the pile of stuff at the house, wasn’t it?” Orloffski answered blandly. He turned away to pick up the set of double tanks. From something about the set of his back Grant suddenly knew he had stolen it.

  Bonham had a funny look on his face when he mentioned it to the rest of them. Without much hope Grant made another search of the entire car. It wasn’t there. They had begun to call the plane. Bonham had once told him Orloffski had curiously sticky fingers, “taking ways,” he’d said.

  “Well, maybe I left it at the house by mistake,” he said finally, lamely, “Will you look for it for me, Al?”

  “I certainly will. If I find it, I’ll send it on to you in Kingston,” Bonham nodded. He looked a little shamefaced. It was a fine note to leave on.

  Doug slapped Grant on the back and kissed Lucky. “I’m sure going to miss you both. Maybe after a week or so I’ll come on down and stay a couple of days with you. If you want me, send a wire.”

  Then the commotion took them over. The noises, the pushings, the shoving-alongs, the no-turnings-back-without-dire-consequences, the whisper of shoesoles and the sighs of the passengers.

  When they were finally airborne Grant felt both angered and relieved. He told Lucky what he suspected about the camera, and then kissed her in their dim back seat.

  21

  HIS BIG HANDS PALMING the wheel of the old Buick, his big feet moving delicately onto and off the three pedals in various combinations
as he herded the old car up and over the hillroad from the airport, Bonham concentrated on feeling and enjoying what his body was doing and tried to ignore his mind, which was in a fury.

  He was as convinced as Grant that Orloffski had stolen the Exacta. Probably it had shown on his face, damn it. And Grant had seen it. He had no proof but he had seen him do things like that before, up in Jersey. But even if he had proof he couldn’t bring it up here in the car with Doug here. And even if he did have proof what could he do with it. Without Orloffski there wasn’t any schooner deal, any corporation. Because without Orloffski’s cutter and money from his shop, Finer wouldn’t go. So his hands were tied. He had to protect Orloffski.

  So he sat and drove the car in silence, seething. Beside him Letta his wife sat in silence also, sensing his mood. In the back the other three talked quietly and the gurgle of a bottle was heard now and then. Letta knew exactly what was happening, she hadn’t missed a trick. And she was backing him up in her way. Instead of pleasing him this irritated him. Goddamn it! he thought, why couldn’t women leave a goddamn man alone once in a while, why did they always have to try to be inside you, part of you, why couldn’t they understand there were things a man wanted to be with himself with, handle!

  It was such a stupid idiotic thing to do. A stupid $200 camera, not very new. It might very easily alienate Grant from them for good. Stop him from being any use to them at all, with the schooner or anything else. All for a dumb camera. Once up in Cape May at a ships’ stores house Orloffski had stolen a twenty-dollar brass doorknob when they had gone there to see about appointments for the cutter. Orloffski had shown it to him after they got outside, jogging it in his hand and laughing. That had been like this. For some bit of an object, some cheap next to nothing, he took a chance on getting caught, with the resulting public embarrassment, the subsequent loss of credit, the loss of his local reputation. Bonham wasn’t against stealing so much, if you could steal something important and of real value to you, like a schooner, and be sure you got away with it. Only, you never could. But to risk so much for a lousy camera or brass doorknob, it didn’t make any sense. When he got him home after they got rid of Doug he was going to read him out good, and if he had the camera make him turn it over. If he shipped it to Grant, it might still save the situation.