Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

That Grant was certainly smart about people. Course, that was probly why he was a playwright. Sam’s hero. Of course that was why she had picked him. And he knew it. Just because he was Sam’s hero. But it was smart of Grant to figure that out. On the other hand, Bonham didn’t care much why she’d picked him. And, in the true fact of it, she hadn’t really done all that much ‘picking,’ he had to admit. Not as much as he had let on to Grant that night at the wheel. He’d been in there doing a little picking himself. He’d been looking at her as far back as that first trip to Grand Bank, he suddenly remembered. But he hadn’t thought there’d been any chance, back then. And there hadn’t been. But he’d still had a little hots for her then, even so. He had thought even then that she’d be quite a piece of tail. But God! he hadn’t bargained for what he’d finally got! When he finally did get it! Wow! Hell! Peering this way and that through his mask among the sparse beercans and whiskey bottles as he swam but seeing no wad of money, or even one bill, he thought back to that first night, that very same night Sam had left.

  There had been some sort of something, some sort of unseen—ungiven and unreceived but still there—signal between them ever since that same afternoon, when Sam had suggested that she stay on and make the cruise and she had so cheerfully agreed. Bonham hadn’t looked at her. She hadn’t looked at him. But it had been there, and he had let her know it. Let her know it in some unseen, unsmelled animal way he couldn’t even describe. He only hoped Sam hadn’t seen or smelled it himself. It had made him hot right then and there, doubly hot, with Sam sitting right there beside him. Why was that? The intrigue, of course. Wasn’t it? It had to be that. Suddenly for the first time in a very long time, adjusting his mask, Bonham thought about that old highschool pingpong buddy who, after they both had returned from the war, had without ever actually saying it offered him his wife and him, he had taken him up on it. He had been ashamed of that; then. But not this. This Cathie Finer brought something out in him he could never remember having felt before. Except once or twice. He could never have that kind of hots for that Lucky, now—that unLucky—not like this hots. But un-Lucky really loved her man. Or at least Bonham thought she did. Worse luck for his cruise, and his corporation.

  She really was a cool customer. That Cathie. That night, that same night after Sam had only just left how many minutes after? just one drink, anyway, she had coolly disinvited herself from dinner at the hotel with the Grants and the Spicehandlers, and taken that same, Sam’s selfsame limousine and driven him and Orloffski into town for dinner. And then, then, after the dinner, for which she’d slipped him the money to pay, she had just as coolly had the limousine (which she had coolly told off to wait) drive Orloffski back to the docks.— “I want to do a little gambling,” she told him quite calmly and coolly, “and you’re not really dressed for going to a place like that, so Al will look after me.” She had told him that, that coolly, while quite plainly Bonham himself wasn’t dressed a damn bit better than Orloffski was. Orloffski had got out quietly.

  “Well, what’ll it be?” she smiled at him coolly from her corner without even touching him, without even touching his hand, after the chauffeur had driven them off from the dock. “Are you game to try the hotel?”

  “Well, won’t they still all be up, there?”

  “If they are, they’ll certainly be in the bar. And there’s a back way in, around by the beach.”

  “It’s kind of risky, isn’t it?” he had said.

  “Oh, aren’t you the scaredy-cat though!” she’d said. “All right then, the Myrtle Beach it is!” and had leaned forward and told the chauffeur to go there. When they got out, she told the chauffeur she would not need him until five-thirty in the morning, and when he had tried to argue, told him not to worry she’d pay him double but just be there. And then she had walked into that lobby as if she owned it and registered them as man and wife and coolly told the clerk she wanted to leave a call for five-fifteen sharp because they were going out fishing; and the clerk had treated her like a queen. So did the bellboys. He had followed her to the elevator speechless. It paid to have money. You knew how to use it. You learned. In the room she had said, “I’m only doing this because of Sam, you know. Because he loves and admires you so.”— “I don’t really care why you’re doing it, Mrs Finer,” he had answered.— “I didn’t think you would. Well, just so that you know,” she had smiled and begun to take her clothes off. And what a body. She was the kind of rich man’s wife Bonham had dreamed of ever since he had first gotten into this profession, way back there in the States. He had done things with her that night he had never done with any woman, had sworn he never would do. It was just a shame he had to be her husband’s friend, was all.— “I just wish Sam was here, tied to that chair, watching all this,” she had smiled sweetly once. “Then it would be perfect. Of course,” she added sadly, “if he were, once he ever got loose he’d kill me.”— “You mean he takes a dim view of this sort of thing?” Bonham said.— “He most certainly does,” Cathie Finer had smiled. “Why else would I be doing it?”

  Through his mask, from maybe thirty feet in front of him, Bonham saw Grant swimming toward him with spread-out arms and shaking his head. He made a despairing shrug. Bonham stopped thinking about his love life, and stopped looking too. The money just wasn’t there. Being light, it might just have drifted off, especially if it had come unwadded into separate bills. It was just bad luck. He shook his head also, back at Grant, and pointed upstairs, and back at the boat which by now was a good ways away from them. They hadn’t found it. And if they hadn’t found it by now, they wouldn’t.

  Mo Orloffski was already up, and waiting for them, when they climbed back on board. “Well, aint you the couple of smart-ass types though,” he grinned in his brutal, so unpleasant way but which Bonham had gotten pretty much used to by now. “Had the same idea myself. But you beat me to it Okay, fork over.”

  “Except we didn’t find it,” Bonham said. “Not a wad, not nary a bill even.”

  “Come on,” Orloffski growled. “Don’t try to con me! I had eight bucks in that pot myself!”

  “And if we’d of found it, you’d of gotten your sixteen. You don’t think I’d leave you out, do you?”

  “Not as long as I caught you, I don’t. Come on! There aint hardly any current down there at all. And you know it.”

  “Then some damn fish ate it or something,” Bonham grinned. “You want us to stand search?”

  “I sure as hell do,” Orloffski said.

  Bonham moved his head. “Okay, come on, Ron.” He hooked his thumbs into his big boxer-type trunks and pulled them down to his knees, turning them inside-out so that he now stood bare-assed—and bare-peckered—on the open deck in the now bright sun and air, the aqualung tank still on his back. Grinning, he even lifted up with a finger the little inside pants, so Orloffski could see between them and the suit. Beside him, after watching, Grant grinned and did the same with his bikini, which however had no little inside pants. Now they both stood there in the full daylight and morning breeze bare-assed and bare-peckered. Anyone coming down the wharf, or even the path, could have seen clearly everything they had.

  “Okay?” he grinned. “You want to look between the tank and my back for Christ’s sake?” He moved his head again and both of them pulled back up their suits. Then they began to shuck out of the gear.

  “Okay,” Orloffski said dubiously. “But I sure don’t understand it. Maybe you hid it somewhere.”

  “Aw, come on,” Bonham said, irritably. “There wasn’t nothing down there except old beercans and whiskey bottles.” He put his own tank, then Grant’s, into the tie racks he had rigged up for them along the side of the coachroof. “We’ll have to fill those. But when we’re under way. Not now. Compressor’s noisy.

  “Because,” he said, particularly emphasizing each word, “I think we better get under way as soon as possible. As soon as possible before those Texans wake up over there. Or we’re liable really to have some trouble with them. And those fucking
Greens. We’ll want to come back here some day,” he explained, “on other trips.”

  That was the second time, he realized, that he had used the word—fucking—within twenty-four hours, the other being last night when he had kicked the Texans off his ship. That Cathie Finer was certainly changing him! Well, what the hell? “And that means,” he added, “that somebody better be gettin up to the hotel and wakin up the deep sleepers.”

  “I’ll do that,” Grant offered.

  When they were all congregated aboard and the hotel bills all settled, Bonham laid out his plan for them. They would pull out right now, before the Texans got up, eat later under way, and head down for the famous, ritzy Dog Cay. It was a little over half a day’s sail. They could lay up there tonight —lubbers sleeping on the damned dock if they must—fish around those waters all next day, and then if they wanted, come back here—because he knew, had found out from them, that the Texans were definitely leaving out, the next day. Tomorrow. For the States. They had been here over a week now this trip, Ferd had told him before the trouble started, and that was about as long as any one man’s stomach could stand that much boozing. Were there any disagreements or other suggestions from those on board the Naiad? There were not. It was great, absolutely great, standing there in the after-deck and cockpit in that chill blue afterlight of just after dawn, all larded over with—but completely separate from—the yellow and red light of the sun itself, all of them barefooted and in their shorts and trunks and thin shirts and the girls’ round thighs all covered with goosebumps. “Okay,” he said, “then the sooner we get under way the better.”

  It was in getting under way that an incident occurred that gave him a further insight into the strange and double-natured character of Grant, which Bonham had never been able to understand anyway. They were lying portside to the dock, and Grant was up forward to cast off with Ben Spicehandler standing behind him there back on the deck to ‘help’ him. After he had started the motor and they’d cast off both bow and stern lines and were moving, a sudden puff of breeze came up from nowhere, as they will do, blowing the bow against the wharf. No harm in that, except that Grant was standing there after casting off, and as the ship moved rearward with the motor in reverse, backing away from the stern of the Texas yacht, Bonham saw they were going to strike just where one of the ancient waist-high, outward-leaning old wooden wharfposts stood. The ship wouldn’t be hurt, the rope fenders he had woven up himself so carefully would protect the ship, but the jutting wharfpost would strike just where Grant was standing, and almost certainly crush him, crush him or both of his legs against the heavily braced, wire-rope shrouds. There was nothing Bonham could do, and his heart leaped up in his throat. To change helm would take far too long to affect anything before they struck. There wasn’t even time to throw the motor into forward out of reverse. There was only seconds. And if he tried to jump and missed, he’d get it between the dock and the hull. All Bonham could do was hope and holler, “Ron!”

  But Grant, who had already tossed the big eye-splice of the bow line back behind him to Ben Spicehandler, was already alerted. As coolly, calmly and sweetly as a professional ballet dancer who had been practicing a particular movement all his life, he watched the dangerous post approaching him, calculating his distance, and then skipped to his left around the shrouds back to deck, and standing on his left leg withdrew his right leg from in front of the wharfpost just half a second before it met the shrouds. And Grant was safe. Bonham had never seen as cool a calculation followed by the completed action in his life, and he’d seen some good ones.

  But then the other part of this strange guy’s strange character took over. Grant began to shake. That he was actually shaking was not visible from as far back as the wheel at the stern, but Bonham could tell that he was. Now that the guy was safe, after as cool an act as Bonham had ever seen, he got scared! And not only that, was not ashamed to show it! After a moment Grant sat down on the coachroof top and put his head between his hands. Bonham would never have let himself do that! Bonham immediately jerked his chin at Orloffski, and Mo sauntered forward grinning, with a bottle of gin. “Pretty cool, there, pretty cool!” he heard Orloffski say admiringly. “I think I would have jumped for the dock.” Grinning a little sickly, Grant downed a healthy slug of the gin.— “I was afraid I might miss the dock,” he heard Grant answer. After a moment the playwright got up and came aft grinning and still a little shaky.

  “Close shave,” Bonham said, making it deliberately laconic.

  “Sure was,” Grant said.

  “I’m sorry about that,” Bonham went on calmly, “but there wasn’t a damn thing I could do after that breeze blew up. Just wasn’t any time.”

  “You think it hurt the shrouds?” Grant said. His wife, who had seen it all from up in the starboard bow, came and stood beside him. Her face was white.

  “Naw-w,” Bonham said. “No, sir. They’re strong. Anyway, it hardly even touched them. It was you between the two there that was bad. But tell me: why afterwards—why after it’s all over and you know you’re safe—why did you get scared then? Once it’s over, and you’re okay, it’s all done!”

  “Nerves, I guess,” Grant grinned. “Too much imagination.” He made suddenly as if to put his arm around his wife, then did not do it; Bonham could not tell if it was because they were still mad, or whether on his second thought the playwright thought it might seem unmanly. In any case, his wife, Lucky, turned and walked away, right back up to the bow where she’d been with Irma and Cathie, without a word.

  Anyway, they were away with no harm done. Bonham headed up into the breeze and had the boys set the mainsail easing off just a little on the mainsheet. After they were out a few more hundred yards he cut the motor and had them set the jib. Then after things had settled down a little, he sent Orloffski below to cook up bacon and eggs and coffee. Even Orloffski could make bacon and eggs, and coffee. They ate outside clustered around the saloon hatch, near the cockpit, sitting on the coachroof. He ate his own plate of eggs at the wheel. Then they all went forward, except himself at the wheel, to what little deck and coachroof space there was left open. He supposed he had overloaded her a little for this trip. But he hadn’t known what damned lubbers they all were! He had asked Ben and Irma that day at the Crount just on the spur of the moment. The wind was from the east-southeast today and fresh, and since they were heading almost due south he could put her on a close reach and she would practically sail herself. God, what a sweet old gal. There was no need to navigate or sail by compass since the string of uninhabited little islets were all clearly visible off the starboard beam. Bonham put her on the port tack and, sitting all alone back at the wheel by himself, let himself think some more about his new ladyfriend, Cathie Finer.

  She was sitting up front with the others, all of them in their swimsuits and bikinis naturally, and every now and then, when some one or other of them moved, he could catch a glimpse or long look at one or both of those beautiful long slim legs he knew so well now. He couldn’t tell much about the Grants. They certainly didn’t seem to be staying so very close together today. They certainly weren’t acting lovebirds. Lucky—unLucky—was spending all of her time forward with the girls, apparently, Irma and Cathie. The Surgeon and his girl were off by themselves. That left Grant and Ben together, with Orloffski. He probably had overloaded her by one couple, probably. But what the hell? Paying dockage charges!

  Grant was probably right about the dangerousness of what he was doing. What he was doing with Cathie. And he was well aware, now, and had been, that Cathie’s taking up with him was deliberately because he was Sam’s big hero, and that that was her only reason. She had told him, over the days— and the nights—all about Sam’s philanderings back in New York after Grand Bank. But it was also clear, from what she had said the very first night in Kingston—as well as things she’d said later—that Sam, philanderer even so, was no upholder of no Single Standard. Sam was obviously a Double Standard man—as of course he was himself—so ther
e certainly was danger in what he was doing, like Grant had said. But on the other hand, he was pretty surely convinced that Cathie was not at all thinking about telling Sam she had slept with his hero Bonham. To do it was apparently enough, without having to tell him. Mean. Very mean. And yet in some perverse way that Bonham didn’t really fully understand it added to the very attraction for him. Dirty. She was really dirty. But she wasn’t his, wasn’t Bonham’s wife. No, she wouldn’t tell. Not unless perhaps at some long now-unforeseen time in the future when she and Sam divorced. She liked having access to Sam’s money pretty obviously. She liked having it to spend. She probably would never divorce him. No, she wouldn’t tell. And if he did catch her with some guy, at some indefinite future date, and she did tell him about Al Bonham, the schooner’s corporation, Bonham’s and Orloffski’s Corporation, would be such a going concern by then the withdrawal of his $10,000—of his twenty thousand—wouldn’t destroy it or even hurt it. No, she wouldn’t tell. Grant was wrong about that. And who the hell else was there to tell on them? Ben and Irma? The Surgeon? Grant? Orloffski? None of them had any reason to tell, and Orloffski stood to lose as much as Bonham if he told.

  But, even so, there was more to it than that. There was that body, for one thing! And what she knew how to do with it. But there was still something else. There was the dirtiness. The very dirtiness of what they were doing was at least fifty percent of the attractiveness of it. She was dirty, really dirty. To be doing to Sam what she was doing, and doing it deliberately. And so was he. So was Bonham. Even if Sam was philandering and stepping out on her, she was dirty, especially dirty, to go out with Sam’s hero Bonham. And Bonham was especially dirty too, to be screwing the wife of Sam, knowing that he was Sam’s hero. Bonham flexed one of his big arms, the one that was not holding the wheel. Strength, size was no credit to a man. You were born with it or you weren’t. But people would heroize it. So they were both dirty. And that was exactly why he wanted her. He wanted Cathie, he realized, because she was dirty and she brought out all the dirtiness in him, all the dirtiness that had always been there but he’d never been able to free, to bring up and out of himself. And she wasn’t his wife. Poor old Sam. Christ, if she was his wife, he’d—