Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  Back on the shore, after they’d settled the big whiskey problem, he had told Orloffski to stay forward tomorrow and keep out of the way. He had also suggested that Orloffski apologize to Grant tomorrow and that that might help some, a little bit. Orloffski had said sullenly he guessed he could apologize but he was damned if he would. Guy accusing him of stealing his damned camera! And for Bonham that had been too much. Just one hair too damned much.

  “Well, I think you stole it too. What do you think of that?” he had said. “I always did think you stole it. Now, do you want to fight me?” Orloffski of course had not. But he wasn’t going to forgive it for a long time, either. A long long time.

  Ruined. Bonham rowed. Partnership ruined, or practically so. Relationship with Grant ruined—especially if that damned Lucky—unLucky—had anything to say about it; and she would. And that meant that also ruined with it, also ruined was his big dream of getting the clientele he had so hoped Grant would bring him, the clientele of Celebrities and such (the “Chosen Ones” of his chosen ones theory). If that Lucky could put in any bad word for him with all the rich and famous people that they knew, she certainly would, he had no doubt of that. And in a strange way he admired her, too. She was certainly all for her man, anyway. Ruined. Bonham rowed. The wharf was almost out of sight by now. Bonham rowed on, feeling it pleasantly, harshly in his back. He felt that if he could only do that, just row, forever . . . But he was drunk, wasn’t he? Loaded. Stoned.

  About the only thing that wasn’t lost was the schooner. He still had her. And Sam Finer. Sam Finer was not quite the clientele Bonham’s dream had envisioned, but he had money. He would bring others like himself down for the cruises. So he did still have that. (And he could imagine the kind of crazy low-class drunken cruises Sam Finer and his friends would make up; it certainly wouldn’t be any ritzy “Chosen Ones” type of cruises.) When he got back to the dock, he would go on up to Cathie’s room and wake her up even if she was asleep. He needed something, some solace. Rhythmically, sweating a little now, Bonham rowed on. Ruined. Ruined. At least for what his dream had been.

  But that Grant. What he had done. With Orloffski. Bonham still could hardly believe it. He must have known he couldn’t win. He did know it. Bonham could tell, could smell it on him almost. And yet he went right ahead like that, coldbloodedly, calculatedly, deliberately. And then to act nervous and scared all the time, like he did. What a strange guy! And smart. He had warned him off of Orloffski a long time back. A long long time back. No, he wasn’t worried about Grant causing him trouble, calling in his mortgage or anything like that. But of course if Sam Finer put up that other—

  When his bow scraped against the little rock islet, he jumped out in his Sperry ‘Topsider’ sneakers into the sharp-rock, slippery shallows and tied the dinghy’s painter onto a spur of rock, then began to unload the dinghy of its cargo. The only sand on this damn little rock was all inland, and he slipped a couple of times on the rock bottom of the shallows but he did not fall. Inland he found a couple of hollow places close together under rocks where he could put three of the cases. He did this and then covered the hollows over with sand. The other two cases he buried in the sand nearby. Then he smoothed out all the footprints. Nobody would ever find it. It took him, all told, almost an hour. He felt like some kind of a damned pirate, and wanted to laugh; but he couldn’t. Ruined. Ruin. Black-beard! Henry Morgan! Captain Hook, even! After finishing, he stood astride the tiny rock (you could hardly even call it an islet) and looked shoreward. The island of North Nelson was clearly visible in the starlight, threequarters of—or just about —a mile away. But he could not call back up any of the pirate feeling. There was no moon. Thank God. All for five lousy damned cases of free whiskey!

  The row back was easy, compared to the trip out with the weight of the whiskey. He rowed easily, pulling powerfully, feathering, leafing the oars with his wrists precisely, on each back stroke. Ah, if he could just only do that, just row, forever . . . But he’d said that already, hadn’t he? And he had other responsibilities to think of now.

  The plan now, with the whiskey not on the ship, was not to leave early in the morning. Instead, he intended to wait until the Commissioner did come down, with his one gendarme (a Green, naturally), and did search the ship. Then they’d be in the clear.

  He tied the dinghy’s painter onto the stern of the schooner. For a moment he looked at her. At least, she, the schooner, was still there. He patted her a couple of times, on the bottom as it were, where her name Naiad had been painted on in good gold leaf, back at the yard in Kingston. He’d insisted on that.

  Then he looked up at the hotel and saw what he had not noted before, that the light in the Grants’ room was still on.

  38

  “GOOD GOD! What in the name of God happened to you!” was the first thing she had said, naturally.

  Grant debated this internally for a little bit. He could make it funny (like, “I ran into a Pole!”), or he could make it ironic (like—like what?), or he could even make it tragic and self-pitying—a considerable amount of which latter emotion he seemed to be suffering at the moment. He decided not to do any of these. “Orloffski broke my nose in a fist fight,” he said tiredly. “I’ll tell you all about it later. But first there’s something else I want to tell you.” He was aware, well aware, that with his busted nose he sounded exactly like a man who had accidentally swallowed a foghorn and then put a barrel over his head.

  Lucky was already up and running around, like some distressed mother hen who has sighted or smelled a fox around, running into the bathroom, running out of the bathroom with a towel, running around to one side of the bed, running around to the other side. “God!” was all she said, and she said it bitterly.

  “Hold on! Hold on!” Grant said in his croaking, strange, foreigner’s voice. “I know how to handle this. I’m an old first-aid expert from the United States Navy, remember? It’ll probably stop of itself pretty soon, anyway. Have we got any ice? If there’s no ice, cold water from the tap will have to do. Soak the two washcloths—”

  “There’s ice,” Lucky said, cool as ice herself now that he had taken over. “I had them send some up to have a few drinks with.” She looked darling as ever in that shorty nightgown of hers that did not quite hide the view of her nipples or her triangle through it.

  “Okay, then. Take two of my handkerchiefs. Put a couple icecubes in each of them and wrap them up. Only one layer of tissue, though. Twist the rest of the handkerchief around them. Okay?”

  “Right,” Lucky said.

  He had sat down in the chair, with his four soaking handkerchiefs, through which blood still seeped to the floor. When she returned with his specific demands, he abandoned his four soaked handkerchiefs and pressed one handkerchief-wrapped pair of cubes against the back of his neck up near his skull. It felt damned good. Then, forcing himself, he pressed the other pair in against his upper lip just under his poor old nose. That action, as he had anticipated, caused him both to wince and to hiss with the pain. And bending his head forward, like the book said, he remained like that.

  “I’ll do that for you,” Lucky offered.

  “I’d rather do it myself,” he said, then added quickly, “not because of anything between me and you, or being mad. Just because I can feel it inside myself and feel how hard to push.” Then he pulled the one away from the back of his neck. “Here, you can do this one, though, for me. Keep it up near the back of the skull. Press as hard as you want. You’ll have to cancel the seaplane call early in the morning. We’ll be leaving before it can get here even. For GaBay. I can’t dive now. With this.”

  “I will,” Lucky said. “First thing.” She took the handkerchief-wrapped ice and pressed it to his neck exactly as he had told her. After a moment, almost automatically, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, though a little tentatively, she began to run her other hand through his hair. His thinning, even-at-thirty-six-thinning, hair. He could not remember having felt anything quite s
o nice in a very long time.— “Those sons of bitches,” she said toughly after a moment. “That Polack. I’ll slit his fucking belly open with a butcher knife. They may not know it but my family comes from Calabria.”

  “No, no. No, no.” Grant said in his weird voice, even more muffled now with the icecubes against his mouth. “If anything, he did me a favor. Maybe one of the biggest favors anybody ever did me.”

  “That oaf,” Lucky said. “That prick. Fist fighting with men half his size.”

  “That’s not the point,” Grant said in his muffled voice.

  “How did you ever imagine you could whip him?”

  “I didn’t,” Grant said in his mumble. “I knew I couldn’t. But wait till you see him tomorrow. I promise you tomorrow he’s going to look at least as bad as I do. But that’s not the point. Listen, I can’t talk now. With this damn thuff against my lip. But I’ve got loth to tell you.”

  Lucky changed the icecubes once, as they melted down. Then, as it began to let up and begin to settle down to a drip, Grant moved his icecubes—like the book said—from his upper lip up to the bridge of his nose. Once again it made him wince and hiss with pain as he pressed, but then he could talk. And he had lots to say.

  “Look. I learned something tonight. I don’t quite know what I learned. But that’s the new play. And when I’ve finished it, I think I’ll know what I’ve learned.”

  Lucky ran her free hand through his hair, his thinning hair, again.

  “Christ!” he said excitedly, though in that foghorn-in-a-barrel voice, “I can see the set now. A schooner, on stage. A schooner cut away in section, see? Not crossways, but from stem to stern, so you can see everything. Abovedecks and below! What a set!”

  “It’ll take an awful big stage,” Lucky said.

  “We’ll make it a small schooner,” Grant said. “And everything takes place on board, see? Maybe we can even rig up some kind of a machine to give it movement when it’s actually at sea. See? And have a rolling backdrop, painted, like when they come up to an island? Or just sea. Just seascape. But changing all the time. Christ, what a set!” He pressed with his icecubes against his nose bridge and hissed again. “It’s stopping.

  “But that’s not the main thing,” he said. “The main thing is I apologize to you for accusing you of fucking Jim Grointon the other night when I was loaded here. I don’t think you fucked Jim Grointon,” he said. Ah, didn’t he? Didn’t he? “I don’t think you fucked him,” he said again. “It’s just that I’m a very jealous man. See? Okay?”

  “Ah, Ron,” Lucky said. Her hand was actually stroking his head now. Through the diminishing haze of his pain she sounded tentatively, strangely, grateful. Or was that just him?

  “Will you accept my apology?” he asked. “Okay?” Spectre! Spectre!

  “Yes,” she said, in a very low voice. “I’ll accept your apology.”

  “Okay. Now, about the play. I don’t know what it is exactly that I’ve learned. I can hardly say it to myself. I probably won’t be able to until I’ve finished it. If I ever can, even then. But it’s something like this. (You can take that ice away from the back of my neck now,” he added parenthetically, “it’s about stopped now.)” But he kept his own still pressed against his nose bridge. “It’s really awfully hard to say. But it’s like this: It’s like they’re not men. Any of them. They’re small boys, playing that they’re men. And that’s what makes it all so dangerous, because they are grown up, and what they do counts. Nations depend on it. The whole world depends on it. But they, they can’t believe they’re not small boys anymore, that they’re grown up, and that there are not big people somewhere, real grown-ups, somewhere around who can smack them, spank them and make them do things. Not only in America, but everywhere! Grown-ups around to take over and make things right. So they just play. And figure it don’t count. If they could only believe they’re grown up!”

  Lucky was still stroking his hair, though she had taken the ice away now.

  “An image came to me,” he said, excitedly, in the peculiar foghorn-barrel voice. “I don’t know whether it was while I was walkin back through that damned sand, or just now when I was talking. But I remember as a little boy when I used to stand in the bathroom doorway and sort of covertly watch my daddy making peepee. And his thing, his cock, was so big! ’Course I was little. But it looked so big, and mine was so little, and I knew mine, my thing, would never be as big as that. Well, they’re like that. All these guys. All over the world. It doesn’t matter what they call it: Communism; Americanism; the Empire. They’re small boys standing in the men’s room watching their daddies make peepee and knowing that their things will never be that big: as big as his: their things will never be as big as Dad’s. Because, see, the ratio of size gets fixed in their heads, the kid’s heads, so that no matter how much they grow up, how big they get, the proportion keeps growing with them. The little kid’s picture —memory picture—stays and grows up with the adult. So that, in the end, they can never grow up. They can never catch up, grow up to Dad’s, and so they stay kids. Adult kids, playing at being men. But not believing it. I think maybe the whole world is all like that. Russians, Chinese, Americans; Presidents, Prime Ministers, Heads of State; everybody. All of them trying so hard to grow up to Dad’s, Dad’s thing. And remaining small boys inside because they just can’t.

  “So they take refuge in bravery. It becomes important to be brave. It is more important to them to be brave than to be anything. Only by being brave can they be what they think—hope—is manly, a man. No other way. Bravery. That proves they’re men. So they make up games. The harder the game, the braver the man. Politics, war, football, polo, explorers. Skindiving. Shark-shooting. All to be brave. All to be men. All to grow up to Daddy’s great huge cock they remember but can never match.”

  He paused, excitedly, and looked at Lucky, out from behind the two swollen sides of his nose which he could see along the insides of his eyes. Then he gave a lame shrug.

  “I know it sounds a little kooky,” he said after a moment. “But that was the way the image hit me. I can remember so well, when I was so little, and Dad’s thing was so huge. I’d like to think, I think I maybe am, growing up to my father’s cock. Anyway, that, that essentially, is the play. And it all takes place on board this schooner, this schooner cut right in half down the middle, on the stage. We’ll even haul up sail, and everything. Have a wind machine in the wings, see? Does it sound kooky? To you?”

  “It doesn’t sound kooky at all to me,” Lucky said softly, in that same very low voice. “I think you’re a fine man. And I always have. Except maybe for a little while there, when I was mad at you,” she added, lowly.

  “It’s all right,” he said, “it’s all right. I should have told you.”

  “Would you like to make love to me?” Lucky asked in a low, almost apologetic voice.

  “I sure as hell would,” he said in his foghorn-barred voice. “But I couldn’t do it your way. I couldn’t go down on you. Not with this sticking out of my face. But if it’s fucking you want, I’ll sure as hell give it a hell of a try.”

  “Fucking’s fine,” Lucky said.

  It was just then that the quiet knock came, on the closed door; and then the door, which Grant had deliberately, not tried to lock, in order to make less noise, swung open. Bonham stood in it, filling it really, and he looked like a zombie. His eyes had the deep dark totally empty look of a zombie, largely because he was so drunk.

  “May I come in a minute?” he asked politely.

  “Sure, Al?” Grant said quickly, before Lucky could say anything. “What’s up?”

  It didn’t take very long. Bonham explained, in a voice which sounded just about as zombie-ish as his face (and body) looked, about the whiskey. It had not been returned. But it was well hidden. So instead of leaving out early tomorrow they were going to wait for the Commissioner to come and inspect them, which he absolutely for sure would. Then they would get under way, back to GaBay. So they didn’t have to
worry about getting up early. They could sleep late. Here Lucky laughed suddenly, a bitter laugh. Bonham turned his zombie eyes to look at her slowly, then just as slowly he turned them back to Grant. “How’s your nose?”

  “Not so bad. I’ve got the bleeding stopped. In a minute or two I’m going to try to shape it up a little bit, if we’ve got any adhesive tape around. If not, I’ll sleep in the chair.”

  Without speaking, Bonham in his slow zombie manner reached into his hip pocket and came out with, and handed over, a one-inch roll of adhesive tape complete in its plastic clip-ring holder. Grant took it, and nodded. “Thanks.”

  “See you in the morning.” Bonham turned to go out of the door. Then he turned back. He stared at the two of them zombie-like for several moments. “You’ve got yourself one hell of a man there, Mrs Grant,” he said in his zombie voice. “And you should appreciate him. But I know you do.”

  “Thank you,” Lucky said politely, and Grant was vastly relieved. He did not really care what Bonham thought anymore, about anything, though—in a childish way—he supposed he was pleased by what the big man had just said. It was a considerable compliment. But mainly, he was worried about Lucky, that with what Bonham had just said—which was so utterly ridiculous, from her viewpoint—she might blow up, and begin to screech and holler like some angry fishwife. But she hadn’t. She had said exactly the right thing to say, and he was immensely relieved.

  “And though I know you don’t like me much,” Bonham went on, speaking to her, “I want you to know I admire you and I think you’re some hell of a woman—hell of a lady,” he corrected quickly. He turned away again. Then he turned back once more.

  “I’m sorry about what’s happened. I know it’s dumb to say that. I guess it’s all of it been pretty much my fault.” Then in his zombie-ish way he was turned and gone before either of them could dispute, or agree with, this opinion.