All These Condemned

by John D. MacDonald

  I got kind of tired and I floated for a long time. I was close to the dock. I kept my eyes kind of squinty, blurring all the stars. Then I saw somebody on the dock right near me, and I could tell from how skinny he was it was Randy. He was looking down at me. That was the first time I felt even a little bit creepy about not having anything on, but he certainly couldn’t see much. Not by starlight. Then I saw him lift something. One of those water skis, and it looked for a minute like he was going to hit me with it or something. I guess he was going to splash somebody.

  “Hey!” I said, and he made a funny little grunting noise to himself.

  “Mavis?” he said. And he put the ski down.

  I realized I hadn’t heard Wilma laughing or talking in quite a while. I called her. She didn’t answer. I wondered if she’d gone up to the house without telling anybody she was leaving.

  It’s funny how alarms go off in your head. All of a sudden, as Gil started to call her too, I just knew something was wrong. I just knew it. And all of a sudden the water was cold. Awful cold. And all the stars didn’t look friendly any more. They looked cold too.

  “Wilma!” I yelled. “Wilma!”

  “All at once,” Steve said, and his voice was shaky. “Now!”

  “Wilma!” we yelled. The night didn’t care. The stars didn’t give a damn. Our voices came back from the mountains. All faint and haunted and horrible.

  “Wilma!”

  Sixteen

  (GILMAN HAYES—AFTERWARD)

  SHE HAD THOSE BIG BOOKS of reproductions. I had put on a shirt she had given me, and some comfortable ragged khaki shorts from the old days. I sat and turned the pages. Dufy, Rouault, Utrillo. What do they say? The honored dead. They leave patterns behind them. They couldn’t even draw. I drew every leaf and it went up on the cork board. Sister Elizabeth said it was pretty. There was something the matter with one of Sister Elizabeth’s eyes. It didn’t look at you. The other kids made jokes. They said it was the eye that looked at God.

  It was dawn and I turned meaningless pages.

  One eye looked at God and you couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but her arms were warm. Her clothes smelled musty and sweaty when she held me close. I was her favorite, so I didn’t mind being held that way.

  She was holding me and I was laughing silently against the mustiness that day. When she held me away so suddenly, I barely had a chance to make a crying face again.

  He’d held me out in the air over the bricks ’way down there. Then he pulled me back and dropped me and hurt my head and slapped me and turned his back on me, leaning on the railing. I was crying. I reached down with both hands and I grabbed his ankles and snatched and lifted as hard as I could. I knew I had to do it fast and hard and strong, because if it didn’t happen to him, he would slap me again.

  “Aaaaaaaa!” he cried on the way down.

  I was looking down when they came out. I was watching, ’way down there, the blood running in a little river down a place between two of the bricks, and he was like he was lying down to see it closer and better, his eyes right near the little river. Sometimes when it was after a rain, they would let us race toothpicks in the gutter. I never cared if I won or not. I like to watch it.

  Sister Elizabeth said it was a dreadful shock to me. She held me close. She smelled funny. I said he was trying to show me how he could walk on the railing. What happened was I was off balance. I did not see him go down, because I was staggering back. That would have been a good part of it. I did not know how many times he went over in the air. And that would have been a good thing to know.

  It’s odd that I should sort of forget that I’m different and it was Wilma who made me remember it all over again. I guess I never did really forget. It’s more that I didn’t use it. If you’re different, it’s something to be used, or it’s wasted. I only used it in little ways. Like that night in the park and hearing them, and creeping close through the bushes, creeping so close to them I could have reached out and touched them. They were like animals. I hit them both, and it was funny I only had to hit him once, but I had to hit her three times. I had been planning to do something humorous with them. Something to make you laugh. But I felt tired and I had forgotten what it was, so I left them there. It wasn’t even in the paper. So what good was it?

  Wilma saw the importance of me. She brought it out. So that people pointed at me, and tried to talk to me, and even said sir.

  I could do the pictures very quickly, and they were four hundred dollars for each one at first and then six hundred and fifty. And now one thousand. But Evis gets one third of that. I don’t see what he does that he should get one third. I ask him and he says things about the high rental area of the gallery and the cost of packing and shipping and things like that.

  It’s important. One of them, I did this: I took the tubes. I squirted the raw colors into my hands. Then I made a washing motion with my hands, then smeared the canvas. The first time I had done too much of the washing motion. It came out gray, for some reason. So the next time I did it not so much and the colors stayed bright and raw and smeared. Then I turned the canvas around and around until it looked like something. Then with black and a little brush I made it look more like what it looked like. That one took a long time to dry, I remember.

  Now I wish I could ask Wilma why she did it. There are a lot of things in the world that make you do other things. And people are always watching and thinking, and you can only guess what the real reasons are, because they all have their own.

  She talked so long.

  They were down there on the dock in the lights, swimming, and the lights were not on where we were. Our legs were over the bank and we sat on the clipped neat green grass, our hips touching, our thighs touching, like friends.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “It was a bet, darling. I’ve been telling you and telling you. You’re sweet sometimes, but really you are terribly dense. Why did we bet? Because there was an argument, that’s why. A stuffy and self-important man. One of those cocktail-party arguments. He said that, in the mass, the people have taste and perception. He said you can’t kid them. My answer, of course, is that the public consists of slobs who like what they are told to like. He was a tiny bit drunk. Drunk enough to bet me one thousand dollars that I couldn’t pick somebody off the street and turn him into an artist. Or at least what the public would consider an artist. I looked around. I thought it would be more amusing if I could find somebody pretty. And there you were, dear, behind that counter, wearing your silly little hat and positively reeking of sex. With Steve Winsan’s fees and the money I’ve spent on you, dear, it has cost me nearly seven thousand to win one. But it has been delightful, really. So I’m just telling you that the party is over. That’s all.”

  “But the critics …”

  Her voice got harder. “The critics worth a damn said you’re a farce, and you are. The sheep went along with the big fad. They didn’t understand those globs because nobody can, and because they couldn’t understand them, they said they were good—pushed in the right direction by Steve, of course. And that created a stir and the stir meant more publicity and that meant more sales, and I got my thousand dollars over a month ago. My God, I couldn’t let you try to draw things, objects, anything recognizable. Your work would be infantile.”

  “But you told me … Wilma, you said I’m different. You said I should be …”

  “Arrogant. Of course. You had to take yourself very seriously. So others would. You had to believe in yourself. That was part of the stage setting, darling. Good Lord, if you keep telling a frump she’s lovely, she’ll start believing it and even start improving in looks. You can pat people into shape like tortillas. Almost any shape you want.”

  “I’m a good artist,” I told her.

  She patted my knee. “Poor Gil. No, baby. You aren’t any kind of an artist. Not any kind at all. You’re just a big guy with muscles and you’ve had a good time, haven’t you? The end of the line, baby. All out. Evis
may be able to unload a few more, but a year from now nobody will even remember who the hell you were. Unless you can keep on paying Steve’s fees, and I know damn well you can’t, because you haven’t saved a dime. And I’m not going to keep on with it, certainly.”

  “I need you,” I said. “I need to come and talk to you. I get shaky and then I need to come and …”

  She took her hand away. “Now listen! How can you be so goddamn dumb? This was a gag. Get it? Wilma had fun. So did you. Now Wilma is bored. With you and with the gag. You just aren’t good company, Gil. You haven’t any conversation and damn few manners and you go around preening yourself and flexing your muscles. I’m throwing you off my back. If you’re smart, you’ll find a nice clean counter and get behind it and put on a monkey hat and start making with the cheese on rye.”

  She left me there. I saw her down on the dock. She was laughing with Steve. They were laughing at me. I knew it. I was nothing and they had made me into something and now they were making me back into nothing again. I sat up there and I was empty. I was like a figure you could make out of twisting wire coat hangers so they were the outline of a man. You could see through me. See the stars and the lights and everything. And sounds went right through me, and the tiny breeze that there was, up high where I sat.

  And right in the middle of all the wire a little round thing started to grow. Round and solid and shining. It grew and grew until it filled up all the wire and then I was me again and I wanted to laugh out loud. The best part of the joke was on her.

  They put it up on the cork board. It was on thick white paper and they put it up with four yellow thumbtacks, one in each corner. I drew every leaf. It took me hours. Every single little leaf, and each leaf had five little points. One day it was gone and I asked, but nobody knew what had happened to it. I wanted to do it all over again, but there wasn’t time. Because by then we were planting the garden. I hated the garden. I worked all one day, squashing each seed between my fingers when I put it down in the hole I made with the stick. Nothing grew there.

  She had thought she had made me. I had made myself. But I could see the danger, even in that. The danger of her mouth. The laughing of it. And others laughing. The way they were laughing down there. I could not permit that. I could not allow it.

  I stood up and felt tall. I felt that my shoulders were against the sky. I looked around. The light reflection was dim on the croquet wickets, on the striped posts. I walked over, and my body felt as if it were made of leather and springs, tireless. I pulled the post from the ground. It was hard wood, striped in gay paint, and the end that went into the ground was capped with brass that ended in a sharp point.

  The wood was hard. I held the post in both hands close to my chest. I increased the effort slowly. My shoulders made popping sounds. The muscles of my arms creaked. My throat closed and the world darkened and my hands were bright with pain. It had to happen, or nothing would happen. This had to be true or nothing would happen. This had to be true or nothing would be true.

  And the hard maple made a faint crackling sound and then broke sharply and I fell to my knees in the sudden weakness, my ears ringing, the depths of my lungs burning. In my left hand I held the turned brass tip, with four or five inches of the glossy wood attached. I threw the rest of the post behind me as I stood up, heard it roll and clatter on the gravel. I tucked the small end in the waistband of my trunks. The brass was cool against my belly.

  It had broken and I was strong and important and known to myself. Whole again and significant. I went down to them and laughter was something that ran gaily around in my chest, little running silver bits, like spilled mercury. I went down among them. It was significant that I went down from a high place where I had proved my strength in the lights. Sister Elizabeth had read the pagan myths to us, of the ones on Olympus who, for amusement, coldly and without compassion, would go down to play among the mortals, concealing the godhead, concealing the shining uniqueness the way the striped bit of wood capped with brass was hidden from them. It was hidden because it was proof of strength they could not know, and if I displayed it openly they would look too knowingly at me and be ashamed. I was grateful to Wilma because she had made it necessary to undergo the trial of strength, the final proof.

  I swam with them, careful not to lose the symbol. It was enough to know that it was there. And I found that I could talk with them cleverly, so that they knew nothing. That was enough. It pleased me.

  When at last, after a long time, we swam in naked darkness, I swam with the symbol of strength in my hand. I played their childish games because it pleased me to do so.

  And then there came a time when I was beside Wilma, stars pale on her body in the black water. And the meaning of many things was revealed to me. It was a new secret I had discovered, a new measure of my growth. It’s something you must learn to do, and it’s hard. You must open your mind to a blankness, and then what you must do will be told to you.

  I felt a great tenderness toward her. A gratitude, because she was making this possible for me. She became a part of the design, and once it was unfolded, it was so evident that I wondered why I had not seen it before. It fitted together. It was an art form in which I had not worked before and the laws of the form were rigid. If it were not done to precise ritual, it would all be spoiled. Out of my strength and importance flowed the plan and I felt humble. It was an honor for her that she could share this uniqueness, share it as a mortal proving her mortality.

  She swam slowly and, beside her, holding the symbol of strength in my right hand, I slid my left hand under her arm lightly across one breast to cup her right breast, the water-cooled surface and the living warmth underneath. I drove the sharp brass tip into the back of her head with one quick blow and pulled it free. I felt a tremor run through her body and then a stillness. She seemed to grow heavier. I released her.

  She was motionless, face down. She sank slowly beneath the surface. For a moment I could see the gleam of paleness under the water and then that faded down and was gone. I had been true to the vision, and I had accomplished it to perfection. She had shared the perfection and it had honored her. I had been given a new reassurance of strength, and out of it I had become stronger. There would be other assurances until I would at last be so shining that they would not dare look directly at me. My shining would blind them.

  When they began to call, I called too, and laughed inside. She lay below us, honored and dedicated, and it was not yet time to explain it. I put the shorts back on in the darkness and hid the symbol again. I dived for her as they told me to. It amused me. Later, back in my room, when I changed to the khaki shorts and the striped shirt, I put the symbol of strength and art in the pocket of the shorts. They searched through the night. It surprised me that they found her. I thought at first that to bring her up would spoil the exact form of it, but then I realized that it was part of the ritual, a part I had not understood. It was fitting that she be brought up as dawn was coming, because then it would form a new symbol of birth into death, the dawn of her honor and of the importance I had given her by selecting her to complete the design.

  They called us and I sat there on the floor and turned the pages of the big books. Utrillo, Rouault, Dufy. They had left patterns behind them. But they could not even draw. I had drawn every leaf. And then I had progressed beyond them to this new form. This new art form had a rhythm and a symmetry that could never be captured on two-dimensional canvas. It had a richness of color beyond anything that can be purchased in a tube. And a brush is an artificial thing. It comes between the artist and the art form. I wondered why they had not seen and understood that. The art form must be done with the body itself. The dance is artificial because it merely acts out a symbolic drama. It imitates the meaningful. The body must be used for a meaningful act, and each meaningful act must be accomplished with the rhythm and design inherent in the act. And the art form cannot be undertaken by anyone except those few who have the special insight and strength of the new shining race
of man.

  I wanted to tell them. I could hear them babbling about car keys and criminal investigation and newspaper reporters. It made me impatient. I wanted to stand up and roar for silence and then explain what I had discovered. If I could make them understand, then they could stop this babbling foolishness. They could not learn the methods and the plans, of course. But if they could follow my words, they could see how it had been given to me to open this new frontier. I put the books aside, those books that were merely exhaustive records of failure, of the lack of comprehension. I sat there filled with contempt for them. No, you could not tell them. It was too intricate for them. Their standards were too mortal.

  I felt the excitement coming, and I did not know why. I looked carefully around the room, looking for the source, knowing that this was, as it would always be, the first warning of a new design, a new creative act. The form was still new to me, so that it took me a long time to find my way through to the inevitable.

  As with Wilma, it was ridiculously easy. They were mortal. They could not be convinced with words. But they could be convinced with deeds. With demonstration. Then they could see, all at once, the beauty and the significance of it. And then there would be no awkwardness and no delay in interpretation. Then we could discuss it calmly and I could explain to them why the form had to be exact each time, balanced to meet the symmetry of the moment, precise in its beauty, brilliant and deathless.

  Mavis Dockerty sat six feet from me, her back to me. I felt differently toward her than toward Wilma. I felt grateful to Wilma. But I owed this woman nothing. It was I who would honor her, who would make her this gift that would provide an eternal moment of meaningfulness to her shallow life, so that, in effect, she would live forever.