Tooner Schooner
Page 16
“Who would have said we should have this wonderful experience?” Miss Tinkham said. “But we must not forget they have had three hours’ head start.”
“Not scared?” Velma said.
“Just thrilled to death,” Miss Tinkham said.
The cabin plane was noisy but otherwise very comfortable. No one spoke during the ride which was much too short to suit Mrs. Rasmussen or Miss Tinkham.
“Nice landing,” Velma said to the pilot. “Where can I get a cab?”
“There are usually one or two hanging around the field,” he said. “Otherwise, you telephone from that booth. Any idea how long you’ll be gone?”
“No idea. You wait,” Velma said as the three hopped into a rickety taxi. “Drive us to the best bar in town.”
“Do you think we have time, Velma?” Miss Tinkham said.
“I’m going to leave you there and telephone to see if they have arrived. Don’t want anyone in sight but me. Give them a little extra hotfoot, in case they’ve reasoned things out.”
Mrs. Rasmussen ordered beer and had finished her first one when Velma rejoined them.
“They’re there. I had to say who was calling before the manager would admit they’d arrived,” she said. “I kept the cab. If all goes well, I’ll be back in a short while.”
“No matter what,” Mrs. Rasmussen lifted her glass, “Tooner can’t say Velma didn’t try to straighten out the mess we all cooked up.”
“I am sure no one could have a better friend,” Miss Tinkham agreed.
“Not even Chartreuse?”
“I’ll breathe easier when the papers are signed,” Miss Tinkham said. “Even a woman of Chartreuse’s basic stupidity should smell a mouse when Velma suddenly befriends her.”
“That’s how them kind are,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
The two friends sipped their beer and listened to the juke box. Miss Tinkham looked up and nudged Mrs. Rasmussen. Velma was coming in the door of the tavern.
“There is no need to ask how things went,” Miss Tinkham said. “Look at that face.”
“I want a boilermaker,” Velma said. The waiter brought her a double Scotch with a beer rivet. “Haven’t done this in years,” she laughed. “I need it to sober me up; I’m drunk with relief.”
“Busy day. The whirling dervish turns as slowly as a sunflower in comparison,” Miss Tinkham said. “Time for another? We can’t talk in the plane and we’d like to know.”
“You should have seen their faces when I told them the Coast Guard was searching for Tooner in a helicopter.”
“Musta been good,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“The landlord is a notary. He said,” Velma grinned, “people in motels somehow want a lot of things sworn to.”
“A justice of the peace could probably do a thriving business,” Miss Tinkham said. “What always amuses me is the number of local automobile plates one sees patronizing them.”
“She offer to pay up like she said?” Mrs. Rasmussen asked.
“I told her that I was able to get the boat papers cleared without charge. I think I’ll have one more for the road.” Velma signaled the waiter. “But the happiest moment I’ve had in years was when I stuck that signed and notarized Coast Guard registration into my bag and said, ‘Chartreuse, you can go ahead and cut Tooner’s throat any time you want to. He doesn’t bleed.’”
Chapter 25
MRS. FEELEY PEERED out of Blue Two and shouted, “Here they come. Get them bottles open. Gawd knows they’ll need it.”
Captain Dowdy and Old-Timer hastened to obey. Velma came in, haggard with fatigue. Miss Tinkham had ripped a foot of green lace hem getting out of the plane. She had applied lipstick in the dark. Mrs. Rasmussen looked the way she would in an eruption of Vesuvius, tidy and pulled-together.
“More happened to us today than most people experience in a year,” Miss Tinkham said. “But it’s our natural tempo of life, a genteel madhouse…Tooner!” she shrieked, as he came shamefacedly from the kitchen. “You’re back!”
“Ayah,” he said. “Feel pretty silly gettin’ the wind up like that. I still can’t believe it.”
“Well, Doubting Thomas.” Velma snapped open her alligator bag. “Set your mind at ease.” She tossed the registration to him. “Take these gals to town and treat them, especially Madam Gazza. You’d still be dragging that ball and chain except for her.”
“Velma has a certain savoir faire that was of inestimable value,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Between the lot of you, you done a job of work on me, all right. Couldn’t a done it myself in a hundred years.”
“We ain’t et since five,” Mrs. Rasmussen said. “My stomach sounds like a haunted house.”
Mr. Cobb came in shyly.
“How’d you make out?”
“The baby’s his!” Velma said.
“I couldn’t go to bed without knowing,” Mr. Cobb said.
“I’ll take you down to the Club an’ buy your supper. You had a monstrous bastard of a day!” the captain roared in his best quarter-deck voice.
“Assuming I still have a Club left to go to,” Velma said.
“Everythin’s been neglected,” Mrs. Feeley said.
“What do you say, Mrs. Rasmussen?” Mr. Cobb said.
“Mussen say mucin,” Mrs. Rasmussen corrected his pronunciation. “You talked me into it.”
“We can bring Sunshine home,” Miss Tinkham said.
“Now hear this,” Captain Dowdy bellowed. “Ennabody brings Sunshine home, it’s gonna be me.”
Seated in a large booth at the Pango Pango, Mrs. Feeley enjoyed the tropical rainstorm with noisy thunder and lightning.
“Could we have a little extry ration of it tonight, Velma?” she said. “It’s so soothin’ after what we been through.”
“Sunshine had oughta sing good tonight,” Mrs. Rasmussen said, gazing into her glass of beer. Miss Tinkham took her hand.
“The look on her face when she saw him come in made it all worth the bother,” she said. Mrs. Rasmussen nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” she said. “She’s almost good enough for him.”
Sunshine’s theme music filled the room. She wore a white satin sarong, edged in green, and a lei of gardenias around her neck. Elisha Dowdy turned his beer glass round and round in his well-shaped hands. He looked up at Sunshine only once as she sang, “To you, sweetheart, aloha; aloha from the bottom of my heart.”
“I can start looking for a new star,” Velma grumbled. “Just when I’m feeling old and tired. More so, when I look at her.”
“You defend yourself very well,” Miss Tinkham said.
“We all defend ourselfs well,” Mrs. Rasmussen sighed. “Trouble is, nobody’s attackin’ us.”
Mrs. Feeley finished the last bite of the sweet and sour sparerib she had put down in deference to Sunshine’s singing.
“What I want to know,” Captain Dowdy said, “is what you’d a done about it if I’d been alongside the dock when Chartreuse sent that letter with the citation.”
“I had planned to have you take out a charter party for three weeks,” Miss Tinkham said, “even if we had to charter the boat ourselves.”
“I give up,” he said.
“You’ll have quite some wait,” Mrs. Feeley said, “if you’re waitin’ for Sunshine to come an’ sit down with us, specially after the brush-off you give her. You better take your foot in your han’ an’ go up and knock real perlite on the door o’ her dressin’ room. The Lord ain’t gonna cut your toenails for you.”
“Nice men is always shy,” Mrs. Rasmussen said.
“Not at the right time,” Mrs. Feeley said. “Git goin’, Tooner.”
Captain Dowdy took a last sustaining gulp at the fresh glass of beer in front of him and got up like a man on his way to the firing squad.
“We’ve stayed up this long,” Velma said, “we might as well see that he makes it to the Coast Guard with the papers tomorrow, I mean, this morning.”
“I’m thinking of a romantic piece to write
,” Mr. Cobb said. “The two of them sailing back to the islands, alone on the boat.”
“You done enough.” Mrs. Feeley turned to him. “Whyn’t you get you a girl o’ your own…?” She stopped as Sunshine came up with Captain Dowdy. “Here’s to you!” She lifted her glass and the others did also. “Now, Sunshine, you always been a good, biddable girl. You listen to what Mrs. Feeley tells you…”
“Fust thing in the mornin’, I’m registerin’ them papers an’ documentin’ the boat with the Coast Guard and the United States Customs both, just to be safe,” Captain Dowdy put his arm around Sunshine, “an’ I got news for you…”
Mrs. Feeley and her friends looked smugly expectant.
“I’m installin’ a Diesel engine.”
THE END
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1953 by Mary Lasswell
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3707-5
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