by James Jones
It would be easier than anything for them to go up there right now, in the middle of the night, crack the old rusted padlock, and just help themselves to a couple, to a gang of cases? No one would ever miss them, there were so damned many. There were only a few workmen actually working on the final interior work up there right now. You fix the padlock back so it looked locked, and who would know? who would pay any attention? They could stow the several cases of whiskey in the bilge under the sole in the schooner. Who was going to search them? especially if they didn’t notice the door, or lock, had been tampered with?
It seemed like a great idea. Bonham was all for it, and his eyes glittered stormily with acquisitiveness. And Grant thought why the hell not? It was no worse than stealing equipment from the Navy. Or Army. To steal whiskey from a rich corporation was not dishonorable. More, it was even honorable. A sacred duty, almost. The old-timers in the Navy had called stealing gear “decorating yourself.” And it appealed in him to that same gnashing, grinding, screeching thing he carried now that had made him want to, have to, shoot that shark. The big shark.
He did not remember getting up there, though it was quite a long walk down the heavy sand of the beach and then inland up through more heavy sand to the deserted brand-new hotel itself. They hadn’t yet laid the walks for the tourists. No, he didn’t remember getting there, but he did remember Orloffski tearing off a good near-half of the door. In his excited enthusiasm Orloffski pried too hard with the little crowbar they had brought from the schooner’s lazarette, and the rusty old padlock was a lot stronger than it looked. The result was that he broke away a good portion of the old half-rotten wood, lock and hasp and all.
That was when the arguments started. Orloffski was for going ahead anyway; he was, in fact, nearly rabid. Bonham was not so sure. Grant himself said he would go along with whatever Bonham decided. Finally the acquisitivesness, the rich greed, in Bonham at all that whiskey just lying there, that beautiful whiskey, just lying there for the taking, decided him in favor of going on with it anyway.
They took five cases. Staggering bulkily down through the heavy sand Bonham carried a full case under each arm. Orloffski also carried a case under each arm. Grant could hardly manage to carry one case in both arms, and even then fell to his knees a couple of times in the deep sand. What if his goddamned wife could see him now? he thought with a kind of crazy exaltation. Finally they reached the beach itself, at the water’s edge, and put them down to rest. The plan was to get the ship’s dinghy and row them to the ship.
Perhaps it was the long struggling climb down through all that heavy sand that sobered him up, but when he put his single case down on the hard sand at the water’s edge and sat down on it to rest his arms, Grant was suddenly sober, sober enough to realize what it was they were doing, what they had done.
Despite the offensive and ubiquitous Greens, this island was part of a British Protectorate, and it was British administrated, and there was a British Administrator, a white British Administrator from England, who was the law on this island. The Law. That was not the same thing as bucking heads with the Greens, who were objectionable in any case, and who also in any case had nothing to do with the new luxury hotel. No, that was not the same thing at all.
“I think we better take it all back,” he said bluntly. After he got his breath back. “I think we should. I really mean it.” And then the arguments really started.
Orloffski was dead set against taking it back. He came up with and developed a list of excuses and reasons as to why they could get away with it that was as long as a tall giant’s arm. He seemed almost beside himself in his enthusiasm for going ahead. Bonham and Grant listened to the end, all three of them sitting on one or another of the disputed cases of whiskey, gesticulating back and forth at each other over this point or that. In the end, after Orloffski’s spiel, Bonham appeared still undecided.
“Since you busted the whole door,” Grant said, in rebuttal, “somebody’s sure to see it tomorrow. Early. They’ll know that it was us. And they must certainly have an inventory of the number of cases. They’ll search the ship. And don’t think they won’t look in the bilge under the sole, either!”
“We can be away from here by dawn,” Orloffski sneered. “So who cares. You think they’ll send the British Navy Coast Guard after us? Fuck off!”
“No,” Grant said, reasonably. “No, they won’t do that. But the Naiad will never be able to put in here again on any future cruises. I can pretty well assure you that. Al?”
“That’s right,” Bonham said thoughtfully, and drunkenly. “And this is a good place to bring hired cruises. On the other hand,” he added, “there’s a lot of other places we can go, too. Thousands.”
“And the boat’s reputation?” Grant said. “You don’t think word of this will get to Kingston? to MoBay? to GaBay? all over the Caribbean?”
Bonham scratched his head. “That’s all true. Of course, if they don’t actually catch us with it, they can’t very well accuse us. Not openly.” He just, very plainly, hated to have to give up those five cases of free whiskey. “And in three or four months I think we can put back in here. Safely enough. Though it might not be pleasant. But in six or eight months we could.”
It all seemed to be getting ridiculous to Grant. All this, over five lousy cases of whiskey.
“Of course we could!” Orloffski said contemptuously. And it was, quite suddenly, then that Grant knew the fight was coming. He started to prepare himself, both mentally, and physically the way he was sitting on his box. “Listen, you,” Orloffski said with supreme, with insulting contempt, swinging back onto him as Grant had already anticipated he would. “What’s the matter with you? If I didn’t know you better, I’d be tempted to think that new broad of yours has cut off your balls and is wearin them around her neck for a necklace. Where’s your guts, prick?”
While he had anticipated the attack, he had not anticipated the virulence of it, or its direction. The direction of it made it even worse. He of course could not accept it. “You go and fuck yourself, Orloffski,” he said calmly and deliberately. “And while we happen to be on the subject of stealing or not stealing, you fucking oaf, there’s something else I wanted to take up with you also. I want to know when you are going to give me back my Exacta camera that you stole from me that time up in GaBay.”
“You what?” Orloffski said. He sounded incredulous.
“You heard me,” Grant said calmly. It was as if he were listening to another person talking. “I want back my camera that you stole. Or one like it, if you sold it. That stupid oafish little trick almost cost Al Bonham here the four thou I loaned him to get your fucking schooner out of hock for you. When may I expect to have it back?” He was using good grammar, even. Deliberately.
“I don’t know anything about your goddam fuckin camera,” Orloffski growled.
“And I say you stole it,” Grant said. “It must be something compulsive about you. I think maybe you’re a kleptomaniac. That’s a certain kind of sexual perversion that makes people have to steal. Though it’s usually reserved to women. So I suppose you can’t help it, in a way. But I say you’re a plain, simple thief.”
He was ready when Orloffski swung. Of course, Orloffski had to jump up off his own whiskey case and cross the intervening space, about four or five feet, but that didn’t take long. Still, being already prepared as he was, he was up, and even able to step out sideways away from the box into clear ground. Ground! Sand, deep heavy sand. He slipped the long looping right hand expertly and hooked hard with his left to the gut, which brought a satisfying grunt from Orloffski, and danced back away, back down toward the water where the sand was at least a little firmer.
Grant had never fought a man as big as Orloffski. When he had fought back in the old days in the Navy, he had fought first as a lightweight, then as a welter as he grew up and filled out. Now at thirty-six he weighed just exactly 165 pounds, which meant he was giving away just about 70 pounds in weight he figured, quite a lot, b
ut for his age and what with all the diving and swimming he’d been doing he was in pretty good shape and wind. But so, of course, was Orloffski. There wasn’t, he calculated, the slightest chance of his winning— unless he could actually knock the big Polack ape out. Grant had always been an awfully hard hitter for his size. But the first time he connected with a hard good right hand exactly rightly and correctly just off the jaw point of Orloffski’s jaw and the bigger man didn’t even stagger at all, he knew there was no chance, as he had pretty much figured from the beginning. It was the neck. Those thick necks. He had one himself. He was beat.
But it took an awfully long time. Grant meant to make it take as long as possible. And he meant to inflict as much damage, do as much harm, as possible in that amount of time. Orloffski was certainly no boxer. He was a real sucker for a clean fast snapping left jab, of which Grant had a fine one. With it he managed to open up cuts over both eyes and on one cheek. Orloffski was also a great sucker for belly and heart hooks, left and right in combination, when he came lunging in. When he tried to grapple and go to the ground, where his weight and strength would make Grant even more helpless, Grant used the hook combinations and backed away, or jabbed him to a standstill and danced back. The two or three times Orloffski tried to kick him or knee him in the groin he evaded easily, and Orloffski stopped that. After that first good solid right to the jaw-point, he knew he could not knock him out, but he used his right hand to good advantage on the cut he had opened under the Pole’s left eye on the cheek. He was also pretty sure Orloffski’s ribs and belly were getting pretty sore.
But it couldn’t go on forever. It was like hitting a heavy bag in the gym. Or punching at a big side of beef hung up in some slaughterhouse. It even sounded like that. And nothing stopped him. All this time Bonham sat on his whiskey case, watching calmly, drinking from a bottle from one of the cases which Orloffski had already pried open with the little crowbar. Grant’s legs felt pretty good, and his wind hadn’t gone. There was actually a moment or two when he actually thought it might go on forever, just go on and on and on like it was going. He actually almost believed that for a little while. But of course he had not been hit yet. Not once. Not even once. And that of course could not continue forever.
Finally the angry Pole connected. It was a short right hand from in fairly close, which Grant could neither slip, nor catch and slap off with his left, and when it hit him he felt as though it had torn his head off. It hit him squarely in the nose, breaking it (he could actually hear it breaking there inside his head, slowly almost), and it felt as though his whole face had come unhinged and been pushed out through the back of his head exactly at that point where his skull met his spinal column. He staggered back a few steps and sat down in the wet seaside sand, blinded. Then he could see again. Orloffski had apparently stepped back a step or two himself, as if in surprise, surprise that he had actually connected. Then Orloffski, grinning, started to come in again.
Grant struggled to his feet to take his beating. His beating he had more or less expected from the start, from the moment he had insulted the Pole so severely that fight must follow. Blood was pouring from his nose all over his mouth and lips and jaw and down onto his chest. But he preferred to take as much of it as he could while still on his feet. He still couldn’t see too good, but he still hoped to get in one or two or three good damaging hooks to the gut and heart. And there was always that old trick of blowing the blood in the other guy’s eyes to confuse him. Ah, Lucky, he thought ruefully, if you could only see your heroic husband now!
Then suddenly in front of him was something else, something broad, something extremely broad. He realized after a moment it was Bonham’s back. Whew! he thought, without feeling ashamed at all. Thank God!
“That’s enough,” he heard Bonham say. “Go and sit down. Have a drink. Take a rest. You’ve certainly earned it, Mo.” The last ironic touch rather pleased Grant.
“The jerk accused me of stealin his camera,” Orloffski snarled.
“I still say he stole it,” Grant said, in a thick strange new voice he didn’t recognize.
“You’re not going to do anything,” Bonham said. “You’ve done enough. Go and sit down. Unless you want to fight me, too.”
Orloffski did not answer this and after a moment went to where the open bottle was and sat down with it on the torn-open case.
“Well, is he going to beat me up, or not?” Grant said in his strange new voice. “Because if he’s not, I’d like to sit down.”
“He’s not going to beat you up,” Bonham said. “Sit down. Here,” he added and handed Grant his handkerchief.
In all he used up four of them, sitting on a whiskey case. He always carried two handkerchiefs himself, because he sweat so much and it embarrassed him And Bonham happened to have two with him also. He refused the offer of a fifth, which was Orloffski’s, and which Bonham had more or less demanded. And while he tried with the four handkerchiefs to stem his pouring nosebleed, Bonham and Orloffski went back to arguing over what to do with the whiskey. Bonham was half for and half against keeping it. He couldn’t quite make up his mind.
“I guess this puts me out from divin for quite a while, hunh?” Grant said in his new voice he hardly recognized.
“I guess it does,” Bonham said.
“Well, I guess that does in the trip.”
“Yeah, I guess it does,” Bonham said.
“Well, I still want you to know I think you stole my camera, Orloffski,” Grant said. Orloffski leaped up as if to go for him again but Bonham blocked him off, and Grant got up off his whiskey case.
“Gentlemen, I’ve had it,” he said. “I’m going to bed. But if you’ve got any sense at all, you’ll see that the whiskey gets back where it belongs. Even if one case is busted open.”
He did not bother to listen if there were any answers, and as he went off trudging slowly through the heavy deep sand with his four soaked handkerchiefs which still failed to stop his nosebleed, he could hear them still arguing behind him. Somehow or other he had learned something this night, something he had needed to learn, something he had perhaps even come down here to the Caribbean deliberately to learn. Even though he didn’t quite know what it was he had learned. All he knew was that he had learned it. But he couldn’t quite say, even to himself, what it was. Well, maybe that would come, eventually, with reflection.
Back at the hotel, he tried quietly to sneak in with his key and sneak quietly into the bathroom. But of course Lucky waked up. If, even, she had ever been asleep.
37
IN THE DINGHY, Bonham rowed. He loved rowing. He always had loved it, ever since a kid when he had first seen and gone on estuaries and open water. It was one of the few damn things in the world where strength and size in a man meant something, helped. And now he let his body and his back; his arms, and hands, and legs, and feet and back; take over and do all the work. He concentrated on feeling his body row. He did not want to think. On the shore before him over the stern of the dinghy, Orloffski with his hands on his hips angrily and his back hunched in an even greater fury stood watching him row away. Well, fuck him. Fuck him, and his goddamn klepto crazy idea, and everything. It was all over, it was all ruined. He had tried so hard, so very hard. And now, ruined. Bonham rowed.
He rowed well, with great experience, and even pleasure (even now), putting all his great strength into it, but the little dinghy didn’t move very swiftly through the water just the same. The weight of the five cases of whiskey in the boat with him, all around him, effectively prevented that.
They had compromised, finally. Orloffski was like some kind of madman and absolutely refused to help carry any of the whiskey back up to the hotel. He had even seized the little crowbar and busted the opened case even further open, and then had smashed two bottles of the whiskey with it. Bonham, drunk as he was, had thought carefully about everything Grant had said, and had finally decided they ought to take it all back.
But it was all pretty academic anyway, with the one
case so busted open, and with now three bottles of it—the one they’d mostly drunk, and the two Orloffski’d busted—gone. There wasn’t much chance of it not being found out now.
So the compromise was that Bonham would go and get the dinghy, while Orloffski guarded the loot, and then row the whiskey out to one of the little brush- and scrub-grown islets about three-quarters of a mile out in the big bent-up U-shaped ‘harbor’ formation made by the two islands, by North and South Nelson, and there hide them in some fashion. Then someday they could come back and pick them up, all at once or one at a time. On the shore before him over the dinghy’s stern Orloffski turned and started trudging through the sand toward the wharf. Bonham continued to row, liking it.
Ruined. Just damn, completely, bloody-well ruined. Everything. And all over five bloody lousy cases of whiskey. God, he was beginning to talk like a damned Englishman, living down here in the Caribbean. Using bloody all the time. That Grant. What a cat, what a chap. Bonham had seen some courageous things in his life, some damn courageous things. But he had never seen anything quite as courageous as what Grant had done, when he coldbloodedly and deliberately insulted Orloffski into a fist fight knowing all the time beforehand that there wasn’t the faintest chance in hell that he could win, and that if he lost, which he must do, he would almost certainly be beaten to a bloody pulp afterwards. And this wasn’t bloody in the Englishman’s sense; this was really bloody. He was glad he had been there to stop it. Being so big did have its advantages, once in a while.
The cruise was ruined of course. Grant wouldn’t be able to dive anymore for quite a while, with that busted nose. Apart from all the hard feelings all over the ship. There was no point in even attempting to go on with the cruise. They’d have to leave for GaBay tomorrow. Sailing on a close reach all day and tacking all the time into the trade wind meant they’d make maybe four or five knots an hour, and it was a hundred and sixty sea miles to GaBay from here, which meant that with any luck at night after the land breeze came up, it would be just about a twenty-eight to thirty-hour sail. With all these fighting people aboard. With Grant and Orloffski both aboard!