“I understand.”
“There was one hanging around they called Boo. From out of the swamps around here from the way he talked. Low class man I’d say. And if anybody was robbing anybody, I’d say he was the one. And if she was in on it, I’d say she was in on it with that Boo fellow.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I guess because he kept dropping in.” I sensed reservations.
“There must have been something else.”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Any little thing might help.”
“It … it isn’t a decent kind of talk, and I don’t want you thinking the wrong thing of me for staying on where that kind of thing was going on. It’s not I’m an old maid. I was married twelve years to Mr. Mooney, God rest his soul, and had three dear babies who died, every one of them, breaking my heart every time, and breaking it for good when Mr. Mooney passed away in such terrible pain it was a blessing when it ended. What happened, it was an afternoon not long before they had to give up the house, and Mrs. Wilkinson and that Boo fellow were out by the pool, side by side in those tip back chairs, her keeping her face turned up to the sunshine. The mister had gone into town for some reason, and I just happened to look out the utility room window where I was sorting laundry. I was looking at them sideways, sort of, her in a naked little white suit, the bottom part like a little narrow band with fringe on it. And I just happened to see him reach over slow and put … put his hand down into her lap. It came into my mind that she was sleeping and she’d wake up fighting mad. But she didn’t move. You know how you want to stop looking at something and you’re kind of froze? When she did move … it was just to make things a little bit easier for him, her face still turned up for the sun and her eyes closed. When she did that, I stopped looking, and I worked like a crazy woman, throwing those clothes around, getting them all mixed up, so I had to sort them all out again, spilling soap all over when I got them in the machine. When I heard them sploshing around I looked out and by then they were in the pool, laughing around. I knew then and there that the mister had a wicked wife, and I made my plans to give notice the end of the month, but before I could tell them, they told me they were giving up the beach house. That Boo man was around there a lot, and by then, those last weeks, Mr. Stebber and the sick one had gone away, back to Tampa I guess.”
“Tampa?” I said it so loudly I startled her.
“Well, of course, it being where he lives.”
“How are you sure of that?”
“Because I’m a real good cook. Mr. Mooney, God rest him, said I was the best he ever knew of. And that man loved to eat. I don’t measure things. I just put things together the way they seem right. I did restaurant work once, but I hated it. There you have to measure everything because you have to make so much. I’m not lying when I say there’ve been visitors down here offered me more money than I’d care to mention to go back north with them. Mr. Stebber is one of those who lives for eating. You can tell it. Mostly it’s fat happy men like him. They shut their eyes when they take the first taste, and they make a little moan and smile all over themselves. He came out there to the kitchen at that beach house and said it was just between the two of us, and when the Wilkinsons didn’t need me any more, I should come to Tampa to cook for him. He said I’d have no heavy housework, and my own room and bath with color television. He said he was away a lot and when he was away it would be like a vacation for me. He said that I’d never have to cook for more than seven or eight at the most, and that wouldn’t be often. He said he had a great big apartment in one of those cooperative places, looking out over Tampa Bay, with a colored woman that came in by the day to do the heavy housework.
“Well, I told him that I just couldn’t bring myself to move that far away from Mr. Mooney’s grave. The three babies lived a little while, every one, long enough to have their names given to them, Mary Alice and Mary Catherine and Michael Francis, marked on the stones. There isn’t a Sunday no matter how I might feel or how the weather is, I don’t go out and neaten up the plot and set there and feel close to the only family I ever had.
“He said again that it was just between us, and if I changed my mind later on, then I could call him up, but the number wasn’t in the book, and he gave it to me and told me not to lose it. But on that very next Sunday out there it seemed to me that Mr. Mooney somehow knew I was carrying that number in my pocketbook, so I took it out then and there and tore it up and let the wind blow it away. Are you sure it wasn’t just maybe the missus and that Boo fellow cheated the mister?”
“They were all in on it, Mrs. Mooney.”
“I do declare. You never can tell, can you? And they cheated that Mr. Watts too?”
“I think that’s a very accurate statement.”
“I can’t think of anything else that would help.”
“Do you know a redheaded girl named Dilly Starr?”
“I can’t say as I do. I guess a person would remember a name like that.”
“Or a Miss Brown, possibly Mr. Stebber’s secretary?”
“Her neither,” she said. “Is Mr. Wilkinson all right?”
“He’s fine.”
“Kindly give him my regards when you see him. He’s a nice person. I suppose she ran off. Well, that’s good riddance. I guess he couldn’t help himself with her. When she was mad at him, she’d treat him like she treated me all the time, like a piece of furniture, wouldn’t let him anywheres near her, and when he did exactly like she wanted, then she was … after him all the time. A woman shouldn’t use that to break a man’s spirit. That part of it is a wife’s duty.” She shook her head and clucked. “That little woman had him so he didn’t know what end was up or what time of day it was. It makes a man a living fool.”
When I thanked her for giving me the time, she said, “I’m glad you came by, Mr. McGee. It took my mind off the way I feel, and maybe I can drop off to sleep now. I hope the mister gets his money back.”
At ten thirty I stopped at a gas station and picked up a road map to refresh my memory about distances in that sparsely settled area. I was wondering about taking the thirty- or forty-minute drive to Marco Island and seeing if I could locate Waxwell, but I didn’t have any sound ideas about the approach. The radio news, announcing thunderstorms moving in from the Gulf, estimated to hit the area about midnight, made up my mind for me. I went to the marina, parked and locked the green Chev, and took a cautious fifty minutes driving the Ratfink home through unfamiliar waters.
The lovers had the lights out and the Flush buttoned up. I unlocked the after door to the lounge and went in and put some lights on. In a few minutes Chook came aft, into the lounge, black hair a-tangle, pulling and settling a flowered shift down on her hearty hips, squinting through the light at me.
“The thunder woke me up,” she said. “Then I heard you.”
“And didn’t know it was me, and came blundering out. Without the pistol.”
She sprawled into a chair, yawned, combed her hair back with her fingers. “So those things spook me, Trav. And it isn’t going to get that rough anyway.”
“I’m so glad to hear the reassurances of a qualified expert.”
“Are you serious?”
“If somebody put neat little holes in our three heads, took the Flush out into that pass, headed her west, set the pilot, opened the sea cocks, dived overboard and swam back, then they could stop being nervous about a quarter of a million dollars. Some people just as alive as you, dear girl, implausible though that may seem, were probably killed today somewhere in the world for the price of a bowl of rice. If I come aboard at night again, and there’s no gun in your pretty paw, I’m going to welt you pretty good, enough to keep you on your feet for a few days.”
“Man enough?”
“Try me.”
She made a face. “Okay. I’m sorry.” She jumped at the next white flash of lightning, and the rain came with the thunder, roaring against the deck overhead, hissing into the bay waters around us.
“Have a happy day?” I asked.
“Nice, Trav. Nice.”
“How is he?”
She gave me a wicked grin. “I think if you hung him by his heels in a barrel of ice water, he might start to wake up a little.”
“Don’t overdo a good thing, girl.”
“And does that happen to be any of your damned business?”
“Don’t flare up at me. It’s a reasonable suggestion. You’ve got ten times his vitality. If I have to use him, I don’t want some damned zombie.”
“You won’t have. You’ll have a man. Something you wouldn’t have had before. Who set you up to know everything about everything, you silly bastard? It’s up to him every time. He deals every hand. So who’s pushing him into more than he can handle? I want him to strut a little. To take charge. With her, you know what he got? When the cupboard was locked, nothing. Other times, she took charge. Until there just wasn’t any response possible, and then she’d tell him he was a damned poor excuse for a man. That was poisonous, Trav. Poisonous. Merciless. Any woman can accept more than any one man can give. It’s a question of mechanics. She can make him feel inadequate, and once she gets him really worrying about whether he can or he can’t, then more often he can’t.
“I tell the poor guy he’s too much, that he’s ruining me. Here is a great triumph. We were walking on the beach there, making dumb jokes. All of a sudden he gave me a great wallop across the fanny with the flat of his hand, laughed like a maniac, and ran like a kid with me chasing him and cursing him, just because, you see, all of a sudden he felt good. It made me want to cry. That sweet guy, he’s a sexual convalescent. I don’t demand. I take it as it comes and fake it when it doesn’t, because right at this stage he has to feel that he’s terrific. And another thing, that’s the same for man or woman. When it’s good, it doesn’t drag you down. It refreshes. When it’s a bad thing between people, bad in their heads and bad in their hearts, maybe hating a little, that’s when it makes you drag around afterward, feeling sour and old. This way, you have a little nap, you wake up starved, you go around humming and whistling. So don’t give me this quack about zombies, Trav. Maybe I’m being a damn fool. I don’t know. I don’t love him. He just isn’t … quick enough, maybe, the way he thinks, and we don’t really laugh the same way at the same things. But I am terribly fond of him. He’s so decent. Now it’s like watching a kid grow up. Maybe it’s penance for me. I’ve bitched up some guys, sometimes meaning to, sometimes not.”
She gave me a rueful smile and shook her head. “Oh, hell. I sound as if I was making such a big fat sacrifice, huh? Yes sir, old girl, it’s a terrible chore, isn’t it? Such dull work. McGee, if you’ve earned one of those beautiful Mexican beers for yourself, I’ll open one for each of us. And you can tell me your adventures. Believe me, we did worry about you.”
“Every minute. Get the beers.”
As she came back with them, the rain moved on away from us as quickly as it had come, making the night silence more intense. She listened intently, her face still, as I recounted events, facts and the resultant guesses.
She shook her head. “That club part. You’ve got a lot of gall, you know that?”
“People take you at the value you put on yourself. That makes it easy for them. All you do is blend in. Accept the customs of every new tribe. And you try not to say too much because then you sound as if you were selling something. And you might contradict yourself. Sweetie, everybody in this wide world is so constantly, continuously concerned with the impact he’s making, he just doesn’t have the time to wonder too much about the next guy.”
She frowned. “You want to move fast, and find out as much as you can in a hurry. Right?”
“Right.”
“Then I think this Boone Waxwell might be more up my alley.”
“You have just one job, and you’re doing it nicely.”
“Do you want to be efficient? Or protective?”
“Both, Chook.”
“But you’ve got no approach to Waxwell.”
“I didn’t until this moment.”
“Like what?”
“The simplest thing in the world. Crane Watts happened to mention him. Watts won’t ever be sure he didn’t. Let me see. Watts said Waxwell might know where to locate the woman they’d used last time.”
“But if he does, that’s no good. Wilma knows you.”
“I have a feeling he won’t take me at face value.”
“He’ll get in touch with Watts, won’t he?”
“And raise hell. Hell conditioned by the idea that maybe there’s another pigeon to be plucked. Anyway, it never works to line it all out ahead of time. It’s better to stay loose. And go in any direction that looks good.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I’ll run over to Goodland in the reliable Ratfink. Alone.”
Nine
In the milky early mist of Sunday morning, the Gulf was placid, so I went out the pass. I looked back as the Busted Flush dwindled, looking smaller and smaller against the beach, blurring into the mist. Her lines are not lovely. She is a burly lady, and she waddles. But she has, on some intensely festive occasions, slept more than I bothered to count. In fact I have a treasured memory of one leisurely trip up the Intercoastal—destination, a big birthday binge for an old friend at his place at Fernandina Beach. On the third morning out I came across a sandy little girl up on the bow, sunning herself in a cute little suit, painting her toenails, whistling with great precision a series of riffs I recognized as Ruby Braff improvisation. She had a great figure, and an ugly charming buggy little face, and I had never seen her before in my life. She looked up at me in pert inquiry and asked me who in the world happened to own this darling boat, because she had just decided to buy it.
There was a crowd aboard again. A crowd of two, and I had left Chook to brief Arthur when he got out of the shower.
I turned south, running a half mile off shore, watching the day brighten as the mist began to burn off. I again had the clothes and gear of the fisherman and almost became one when I saw an acre of water being slashed white ahead of me and farther off shore, birds working over it. I ran at it, killed the motor at the point where momentum drifted me to the outer fringe of the activity. I peered down into the green and saw, a few feet below the surface, a combat squad of big bonita wheeling to hit back into the bait school. School bonita run all of a size, and allowing for the magnification of the water, and my momentary glimpse of them, they had to be upwards of six pounds. All they would do would be tear up my light spinning gear on the chance of boating something inedible. They are the great underrated game fish of the Gulf coast. On light gear, a six-pound bonita is the equal of a twenty-pound king mackerel. There is one thing they all do. Work them, with great effort, close to the boat, and they give you one goggle-eyed stare, turn and go off in a run every bit as swift and muscular as the first one. And they will keep doing that until, on light tackle, they die in the water. It seems a poor reward for that much heart in any living thing, particularly when the meat is too black, bloody, oily and strong to make edible. Bonefish quit. Barracuda dog it. Tarpon are docile once they begin to show their belly in the slow rolls of exhaustion. But the only way you can catch a live bonita is to use gear hefty enough to horse him home before he can kill himself.
I continued south, past Big Marco Pass, and put on dark glasses against the increasing glare. I have ample pigment in my hide, but a short supply in the iris. Pale eyes are a handicap in the tropics. I passed what was Collier City once upon a time, then cut inside around Caxambas. The dozers were working even on a Sunday morning, orange beetles making expensive homesites upon the dizzy heights of the tallest land south of Immokalee—bluffs all of fifty and sixty feet above sea level. I checked my chart, went around the indicated islands, and came in view of the mild and quiet clutter of Goodland, houses, trailers, cottages, shacks spread without plan along the protected inner shore, beyond a narrow beach of dark sand and rock and shell.
I tied up. The pumps were padlocked. A gnarled old party sat mending a gill net with hands like mangrove roots. “Do any good?” he asked.
“All I saw was bonita outside. Didn’t mess with them.”
He looked at the sky, spat. “Won’t be much now till near sundown. Big snook came in right under this here dock last night, popping loud as a man slapping his hands. Joe Bradley, he got one upwards of eighteen pound.”
“That’s a good snook.”
“If’n you don’t know how it used to be around these parts. You want gas? Stecker don’t unlock till ten Sundays.”
“There’s a man here I was told to look up. Will my gear be okay if I leave it right there?”
“Sure. Who you looking for?”
“A man named Waxwell.”
He grunted, pulled a knot tight, spat again. “There’s Waxwells spread all the way from here to Forty Mile Bend. There’s Waxwells in Everglades City, Copeland, Ochopee, and, far as I know, a couple way up to La Belle. When they breed it’s always boy babies, and they breed frequent.”
“Boone Waxwell?”
His grin was broad, showing more gum than teeth. “Now that one is a Goodland Waxwell, and he could be to his place, which isn’t too likely of a Sunday morning, and if he is at his place they’s a good chance he got a ladyfriend visiting, and if he’s there and he don’t, it’s still a time of day he could get mean about anybody coming to visit. Come to think on it, there isn’t anything he won’t get mean about, one time or another.”
“I won’t let him hurt my feelings.”
“You look of a size to temper him down some. But be careful on one thing, or size won’t do you no good atall. What he does, he comes smiling up, nice as pie, gets close enough and kicks a man’s kneecap off, then settles down to stomping him good. A few times he’s done it so good, he’s had to go way back into the Park until things quieted down. A couple times everybody thought we’d be rid of him for a few years, but the most it ever turned out was ninety days the county give him. He prowls four counties in that fancy car he’s got now, but around here he keeps to hisself, and that suits everybody just fine.”
Bright Orange for the Shroud Page 11