My car was around the corner on Fifty-Third Street. “Anywhere?” I asked. She said, “Sure,” so I turned the car over towards the river.
She lit a cigarette, gave it to me, lit another for herself, slid down comfortable in the seat, and asked, “When do you fight again?”
“First of the month, in Boston.”
“Who?”
“Pinkie Todd.”
“I never saw him fight.”
“Neither did I,” I said, “but I hear he’s all right.”
She laughed. “He’ll have to be a lot better than all right to—”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m great, I’m marvelous, I’m the toughest, gamest, cleverest middle-weight since some guy whose name I forget. Now shut up.”
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said, “except I’d like to bust out crying.”
We were riding over the bridge then. She put her face close to mine, staring at me, and said, “Listen, Kid, I don’t care how fast you drive if you’re sober. Are you?”
“I’m sober.”
She said, “OK,” and made herself comfortable again.
I said, “But I don’t see why you take my word for it.”
She sat up straight. “And I don’t see why you brought me out here just to pick a fight with me. I never did anything to you. You never saw me before tonight. You don’t know me from Adam.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “Why do I have to pick up some girl I don’t even know her name and might be any kind of tramp and go—”
“You didn’t pick me up,” she said. “We were introduced by Fred Malley and my name’s Judith Parrish and I’m not any kind of tramp and you can let me out right here at the end of the bridge.”
“Stop it. I didn’t mean anything personal. I’m just trying to—”
She laughed and said, “You must be a honey when you get personal.” Her laugh was nice.
“I’m just trying to get something straight, for myself I mean.”
She put a hand in the crook of my arm. “It’s that fight tonight that’s worrying you, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Fixed?” she asked.
“No. That’s happened without bothering me, but tonight was on the level.”
“Well, then, what’s the matter with you? It was a swell fight. You were swell.”
“I know better,” I said, “and Monk knows better.”
“That’s what’s the matter with you. That guy’s got you buffaloed.”
“You talk too much—what’s your name?—Judith, about things you don’t know anything about.”
She took her hand away from my arm and said, “Listen, Kid, this was your idea. You said, ‘Let’s go for a ride where we can talk,’ and now every time I open my mouth you jump all over me.”
“Well, lay off Monk. He’s a swell guy. He don’t give a damn for anybody but himself.”
“You said that before, but you didn’t say how that made him such a swell guy.”
“It makes him a swell guy for me,” I said, “because he’s my manager.”
She stared at me again. “Could a girl ask what that’s supposed to mean without getting jumped on?”
“I mean he’s smart and he gets thirty percent of my take.”
She whistled. “I’ll say he’s smart if he’s collecting a third of your money. You must be in love with that guy.”
“You’re being a cluck again. Light me a cigarette? Listen, did you—”
She interrupted me. “Listen, Kid, this way you talk to me doesn’t mean anything? That you don’t like me or something? It’s just your way of talking, isn’t it?”
“I like you fine,” I said. “I’m just dead tired.”
She gave me the cigarette I had asked for. “Go ahead,” she told me. “I won’t mind any more.”
“I’m scared,” I said and I didn’t know I said it out loud until she jumped and asked, “What?” in a sharp voice. I wouldn’t lie about it then. “I’m scared stiff,” I said.
She put her hand back in the crook of my arm, her head against my shoulder. “You’re just tired, Kid, and no wonder. Eight rounds of the kind of fighting you did tonight is enough to—”
“I’m scared too.”
“Scared of what?”
“I don’t know how to say it,” I said, really talking to myself, “except it’s Monk.”
THE CURE
“So I shot him.”
Rainey screwed himself around in his chair to see us better, or to let us see him better.
I was sitting next to him, a little to the rear. Above the porch rail his profile stood out sharp against the twilight gray of the lake, though there was nothing sharp about the profile itself. It had been smoothly rounded by thirty-five or more years of comfortable living.
“I wouldn’t have a dog that was cat-shy,” he wound up. “What good is a dog, or a man, that’s afraid of things?”
Metcalf, the engineer, agreed with his employer. I had never seen him do anything else in the three days I had known them.
“Quite right,” he said. “Useless.”
Rainey twisted his face farther around to look at me. His blue eyes—large and clear—had the confident glow they always wore when he talked. You only had to have him look at you once like that to understand why he was a successful promoter.
I nodded. I didn’t agree with him, but I was there to put him in jail if I could, not to pick arguments with him. And with Rainey you had to agree or argue: he always treated his audience like a board of directors to be won over one by one to some project.
Satisfied with my nod, he turned to the fourth man on the porch, Linn, who sat on the other side of Metcalf. That—saving Linn till last—was another promoter’s trick. Rainey never forgot his profession. He had turned first to Metcalf, his personal yes-man, then to me, who had managed to agree with him in most things during the three days of our acquaintance, and then, with our votes in his pocket, had turned to the one of whose agreement he was least sure.
Linn didn’t say anything. He was staring thoughtfully down the lake, down where Rainey’s and Metcalf’s dam was not hidden by the dusk.
Rainey leaned toward him, trying to catch his eye, didn’t succeed, settled back in his chair again, and asked: “Well, am I right, Linn?”
Linn cleared his throat and, still staring down at the dusky lake, replied: “I don’t know.” He said it as if he really did not know. “It’s possible, isn’t it, that a dog might run from a cat and not from a wolf? There are things—”
“Nonsense.” Rainey’s easy tone made his words sound more polite than they really were. “Either you’re afraid or you’re not. You can’t pin fear on one form of danger. The things to be afraid of are pain and death. Either you have the nerve to do things that might bring them, or you haven’t. That’s all there is to it. Eh, Metcalf?”
“Quite right, I think,” the engineer agreed without much interest. He was a lank sandy-haired man, hard and sour of face, who seldom spoke unless spoken to, and then, even when coming up with a yes for his employer, made no attempt to hide his indifference.
Linn turned his face slowly from the lake to the promoter. His face seemed a little pale under its sunburn, and a little tense, as if the conversation was of importance to him. Light from one of the hotel windows behind us made shiny ripples on his smooth black hair when he shook his head.
“You may be right,” he said hesitantly, “about pain and death being the things men fear, but in one form they might frighten him beyond reason, while in other forms he might be able to face them quite calmly. Fear isn’t a reasonable thing, you know.”
Rainey clapped a hand on his thick knee and thrust his ruddy face—full-blooded and round-muscled under curly light hair—forward.
“I’ve heard of that,” he said, “but I’ve never seen it. I’ve banged around some. The men I’ve seen that were afraid of one thing were afraid of others. All of them.”
&nbs
p; “I’ve seen it,” Linn insisted quietly.
“Yes?” Rainey’s deep-chested voice was openly skeptical. “Can you give us a specific instance?”
“I could.”
“Well?”
“Myself,” Linn replied, so low that the word was barely audible.
Rainey’s voice was loud and challenging: “And you’re afraid of—?”
Linn shivered slightly and turned his face from the promoter to nod simply at the dark water in front of us.
“Of that,” he said, still speaking very low. “Of water.”
Rainey made a little puffing noise with his mouth and looked with proprietary contemptuousness at the broad lake that had been little more than a pond before the organization of the Martin E. Rainey Development Company. Then he smiled with little less contemptuousness at the man who was afraid of the thing he had built.
“You mean,” he suggested, “that being on the water makes you a little nervous, perhaps because you’re not sure of your swimming?”
“I mean,” Linn said, speaking rapidly through tightened, thinned lips, looking Rainey straight in the eye, “that I’m afraid of water as a rat is of a cat. I mean that I am not a little nervous when I am on the water, because I do not go on it. I mean that to cross a bridge even leaves me useless for hours afterwards. I mean, in short, that I am afraid of water.”
I looked at Metcalf. The engineer was looking, without moving anything but his eyes, from Linn to Rainey. He looked disgusted with the pair of them, as if he wished they would shut up.
I was enough interested in what was going on that I didn’t light my cigarette because I was afraid the flare of light would bring them, or at least Linn, back to normal.
Rainey made a circle in the air with the pink end of his cigar.
“You’re exaggerating, of course,” he said. “Swim?”
“Swim?” Linn repeated with an angry sort of softness. “How in hell can I swim when more water than a bath-tub will hold drives me into lunacy?”
Rainey chuckled.
“Ever try to cure yourself?”
Linn laughed, a low laugh with an insulting purr in it.
“Try to cure myself?” Excitement blurred his words, but he kept his voice pitched very low. “Do you think I like being this way? Oh, yes, I’ve tried—and succeeded in making myself worse.”
“Nonsense,” Rainey said, and now the professional mellowness of his voice couldn’t hide a sharp-edged undertone of annoyance. “A thing like that can be cured—if its owner is sound at bottom.”
Linn’s face flushed in the deepening twilight, and then paled again. He didn’t say anything.
“I’ll bet you,” Rainey said, “one thousand dollars I can cure you.”
Linn laughed in his throat, without enjoyment.
“It would be worth that and more,” he said, “but—” He shrugged and asked: “Do you know what time the last mail goes out?”
“It’s simple as can be,” Rainey said. “Naturally you’re afraid of water if you can’t swim. Why shouldn’t you be? It’s a real enemy if you’re helpless in it. But if you learn to swim, then where will your fear come from?”
Linn laughed again.
“Fair enough,” he said softly, “but how in hell can a man learn to swim when more than a tubful of water turns him into a lunatic? Do you think I’ve gone all these years without trying to learn? Do you think I like burying my head under Pullman blankets when I hear the roar of a bridge under my train?”
“You’ve tried to swim, then, and couldn’t?” Rainey insisted.
“Of course,” Linn said wearily.
“How?”
“How? In the water, of course, going into the water.”
“Going slowly in, with fear climbing up into your neck with each step?”
“Something of the sort.”
“Exactly the wrong way,” Rainey said triumphantly. “No wonder you’re still scared silly.”
“And how”—Linn’s voice was tauntingly mild—“would you suggest going about it in the right way?”
“In the simplest, most sensible way, the way I learned. Listen, Linn, I’ll cure you, absolutely, if you’ll do what I say. I’ll put five hundred dollars against your hundred that I can do it. Or if you don’t want to bet I’ll put a hundred dollars in either of these gentlemen’s hands—yours if it doesn’t work.”
“How?”
“In the only sensible way. Go out with me in a boat tomorrow, and jump over in the middle of the lake. If you can’t jump, let me throw you. You’ll swim, no fear.”
“My God,” Linn said in an awed tone, “I believe you mean it.”
“Certainly I mean it. Why shouldn’t I mean it? And it’ll work, too. You needn’t be afraid of drowning. I’ll be there to pull you out if necessary: I’m not exactly an infant in the water. But it’s ten to one you won’t need pulling out. Swimming isn’t a mysterious thing: it’s something that all animals do naturally and that a man can do naturally too when he needs to. You’ll find yourself somehow moving back to the boat. Are you game?”
The corner of my left eye caught a movement. I turned my head to that side, but saw nothing now except the dark angle of the porch eight or ten feet from us, where it turned to run down the side of the building. I had the impression that somebody had looked, or had started to come, around the corner, and then, seeing us, had withdrawn.
“It isn’t a question of gameness,” Linn was protesting evenly. “It’s simply that I know myself and my terror in water. I’m supposed to be resting just now. It seems foolish that I should tear my nerves to pieces—that’s what it would amount to—just to disprove an old theory.”
“Well, of course, if you’re afraid to take a chance.” Rainey shrugged his big shoulders.
“It’s not that I’m afraid to.” Linn’s voice was thin and higher pitched than it had been. “But it’s so useless. I’ve tried everything, and—”
“And you’re used to being afraid,” Rainey finished for him, bluntly. “Did it ever occur to you that everybody is more or less afraid of nearly everything, and that courage isn’t a damned thing but a habit of not dodging things because you’re afraid of them?”
Linn started to jump up out of his chair, and then sat there very erect. In the dim light from the window his face showed pale and shiny with sweat. He was trembling from foot to mouth.
“But,” the promoter said, and yawned showily, “if you’re really too scared to take a first-rate chance of curing yourself, I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it.”
Linn jumped up out of his chair now and cried angrily: “I tell you, it’s more complicated than that. It’s not simply a matter of driving myself to do something. That can be done. But it’s the after-effect—whether it’s worth it or not.”
Rainey said, “Oh, hell!” and threw the remains of his cigar away. He stood up and looked contemptuously down at Linn. “It’s all right with me,” he said. He turned his broad back to Linn and addressed Metcalf and me: “Let’s see if we can find a billiard table.”
Linn put out a hand to Rainey’s arm and turned the big man around.
“I’ll take you up, Rainey,” he said through lips that barely moved. “When shall we try it?”
Rainey grinned down at him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“That’s sensible,” he said. “That’s damned sensible of you, Linn. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Suppose we try it first thing in the morning.”
Linn nodded without saying anything. His face was still angry.
Rainey said: “I don’t suppose you’ve got a swimming suit. Well, I’ll get you one, and we’ll go off a little after breakfast. Don’t worry about it. You’ll see it’ll be all right.”
Linn nodded again.
Footsteps approached from the end of the porch. Metcalf and I stood as Mrs. Rainey came up. Her face was white at Linn’s.
“Please, Mr. Linn,” she said earnestly, “I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t think it’s safe to tamper with
yourself that way. I wish you’d think it over first, anyway. I honestly think you’d be wiser to let well enough alone.”
There was an uncomfortable pause during which nobody could think of anything to say. Then Linn bowed awkwardly at Mrs. Rainey and said: “I think perhaps your husband is right, Mrs. Rainey.” He spoke stiffly, and his face was flushed: he was embarrassed. “We’ll see tomorrow. I’m—I’m really anxious now to try it.” He bowed again. “You’ll excuse me? I’ve some letters to get off.” He turned toward the door.
Mrs. Rainey went with him, her hand on his arm, saying as she went: “Please, don’t, Mr. Linn. I’d never—”
“My dear,” Rainey called after her, not succeeding in altogether keeping the snarl out of his voice, “you mustn’t intrude. It wasn’t nice of you to eavesdrop.”
She paid no attention at all to him.
He jerked himself up tall and straight, and took a step forward.
“Pauline,” he called, and there wasn’t anything in his tone except authority.
Mrs. Rainey turned her head over her shoulder as Linn opened the door. The light fell on her blonde hair and handsome face with its very tired blue eyes.
“Yes, dear,” she said to her husband, smiled politely, and went into the hotel with Linn.
Rainey said: “Well, how about billiards?”
His game was terrible that night.
II
A little to the left of the hotel, a short concrete pier stuck out into the lake like a stubby finger pointing at the other shore. Fifteen or twenty of us—guests of the hotel, a hotel employee or two, a few men from the development company’s camp, and some from the village—were on hand to watch the Rainey-Linn experiment the next morning.
The promoter, in red bathing suit and light overcoat, was on the pier when I got there. He was sitting on the railing, smoking a cigar and talking to Metcalf and some of his other hired men.
“Good morning,” he said. I had missed him at breakfast. “A swell day, eh?”
“Yeah. Looks like you’re going to have plenty of audience.”
The Hunter and Other Stories Page 13