“I have money,” he said, still tormenting himself about it. Then he cried out, “Money to feed the flesh!” and this time he was the one that backed away. And suddenly turned and ran off like a wild man, staggering up over the dunes and down the other side like somebody all liquored up and not knowing what he was doing.
EIGHT
For a wonder he wasn’t anywhere around the next day, and when I got time off from the restaurant I went over to the barge to ask about him. Felix and his friend were there caulking the new timbers while the engineer of the tug kept an eye on them. The engineer’s name was McAuliffe. He was a skinny man who could eat twice as much as anybody I ever knew, and he didn’t mind the heat because he was from New Orleans. He was always in a good mood, too, because he was getting his regular pay from the tugboat company right along, and the insurance people were giving him that much again for supervising the repair job on the barge. He was the one I asked.
He pointed at Felix and said, “Last time I saw Avery he borrowed that fellow’s boat and was on his way to Key West. Said he’d be back before dark. He better be. If any of this stuff is swiped it’ll come out of his own pocket most likely.”
I said, “I don’t guess that would bother him any. He told me he had a lot of money.”
“Him?” McAuliffe said. “You believe that kind of talk from a bargehand?”
“I don’t know. You think he was lying?”
McAuliffe scratched his head. “Maybe not. Fact is, I never saw him spend any of what he makes, so maybe he’s got something saved up. But it won’t last long once he gets to New York. Not more than a week it won’t. I’ve seen the way that kind does it. That’s the holy kind, you’d think butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. They keep stewing inside but never letting on, just stewing and stewing, and then they let go, all in one shot. They hit New Orleans or Mobile, and next day they’re in jail using their good money to get bailed out. That’s the way Avery strikes me, not that I know much about him. Or care to. And New York’s same as New Orleans, only bigger. It’s just waiting for old Avery.”
I said, “Were you ever in New York?”
“No, this outfit don’t work up north that far. We’ll take this here scow far as Newport News, and then some tug out of there’ll bring it up to Bayonne right next to New York, and after that their own company tug’ll take over. Shows how slow things are in the Gulf when they start pulling these scows out. Trouble is with them Latins down south having revolutions. They get tanked up on that bugjuice they drink and start shooting up everything and spoil everybody’s business. Anyhow, I don’t go much for New York. New Orleans is the place for me. Got a big old house there and a wife and two kids waiting, and that’s how I like it. Ever been there?”
I said, “No. Is New York far away from Indiana?”
He thought it over and said, “Depends on what you mean by far. Why? You got people in Indiana?”
“No,” I said, and wanted to get away before he could start pumping me about it, but I was stuck for a while until he showed me a lot of pictures he took of his wife and kids. I said they were real nice, but they weren’t. They were just like anybody else’s wife and kids. And it was easy to see for all McAuliffe was so skinny and good-mannered himself that his kids were fat and sulky as a pair of hogs. They probably gave him a hard time just because he was so nice.
That night when Avery didn’t come for supper I started to worry. It wasn’t the kind of worrying that scares you, it was more the interesting kind. About how Avery might have been so put out because I wouldn’t marry him that he went to Key West and did something dangerous, and then the Citizen would write it up and maybe my name would be there, too. McAuliffe said he was the sort who kept everything bottled up in him until he was ready to pop his cork with a bang, so it could happen that way. Afterward, the Citizen would send somebody to take my picture. It would be a bathing-suit picture out in the cove, and I would be looking sad and pointing to the place where Avery asked me to marry him and I said no. The Citizen was a big paper, too. If somebody out in Hollywood read it and saw that picture he might write me a letter and tell me to come and take a screen test. I didn’t really believe that would happen, but it was interesting to think about.
When it got dark and Cole and Lettie sat out on the porch to cool off I went up to the mirador so I could be by myself and think about it some more. I took cigarettes and a bottle of Coke with an aspirin in it because that way it’s almost as strong as liquor, and I sat with my back against the rail, looking out to the little edge of light up north which was Key West and taking turns smoking and drinking Coke. But it was hard to think about what I wanted to. The more I tried, the more I found I was wondering how it would be to travel up north in that barge and get away from Mooney’s Key once and for all. If Avery really had money we could live in New York about a mile up in one of those big buildings, and I could travel from there to any place I wanted. Like Fairmount, Indiana, or Hollywood or even back to Key West and show Marilyn Olivas a thing or two.
I guess that’s the way it goes. You might be sorry for the things you do, but you’re always sorrier for the things you don’t do because then you’ll never know. And afterward you find yourself wondering about it. Like wondering what it was like when you were in bed with a man, even if it was an old man like Avery. Especially if all you knew about it was from Yeager, and the Rios kids running around naked when they were little, and the medical book in back of the library along with the encyclopedias. That medical book was real useless. It had pictures of a man and a woman to show you what went on, but the pictures were just outlines full of red and blue lines like a road map, and it would take a genius to make any sense out of them.
What pulled me up short while I was thinking along this way was the sound of talking on the porch, and I knew right quick that Avery was doing most of it. So he was back, after all, no harm done, no newspaper pictures or anything. Then a minute later Cole started to yell for me, and all of a sudden I felt queer inside. There was no reason for it. When Cole and Lettie were out on the porch nights he was always yelling for me to make coffee or chop ice for drinks, but somehow I knew it wasn’t any of those things this time.
I didn’t want to go down. I made myself little and put my hands over my ears, but it was no use because I could still hear Cole. He was yelling that if I didn’t come down he’d come up after me, so I came down as slow as I could and went around to the porch where they were waiting. Cole and Avery were standing there, and Lettie was rocking back and forth in her old rocker, her arms folded on her chest, her eyes straight ahead as if she didn’t see me.
“It took you long enough, didn’t it?” Cole said, but Avery didn’t give him a chance to get started on me. Avery had a big box in his hand. He shoved it at me and said, “Here. This is what you wanted. Take it,” and when I was holding it he pulled off the cover so I could see.
It was the mink coat. It weighed more than I thought any coat could ever weigh, and when I put my hand on it, it was so soft that I didn’t believe it. It was the most beautiful thing ever made. It was a lot better than the one the girl was wearing in the picture with Jimmy. I took it out of the box and put it on, and Lettie wouldn’t look at me, but Cole looked like his eyes were ready to pop out of his head.
“What’s that?” he said. “Now, what’s that?” not swearing about it because Avery was there, but looking as if he wanted to. “That thing cost money. It sure must have cost a lot of money, didn’t it?” he said to Avery.
Avery took out a piece of paper and gave it to me. “Read it,” he said. “It’s my bond. It’s the bond between us, the way you wanted.”
I read it. In typewriting it said One Ranch mink, full length, $1000, and underneath it was signed I. Berger, Paid in Full, so I knew the coat was real. Then Cole grabbed away the paper from me and read it himself. “Oh, that’s fine,” he said to Avery. “That’s a fine thing. I guess it don’t leave very much for doing business, does it?”
“It leave
s enough,” Avery said. He pulled up his sweater and shirt so that his hairy belly showed, and around it was one of those canvas money belts. He pulled it off and opened it, and there was a lot of money in it. He took out all the money and made a pack of it in his hand like dealing cards and started dealing it off to Cole one bill after another, counting as he went along. When he reached five hundred he stopped and held up the couple of bills left so we could all see.
“There is the crust left to me,” he said. “By means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread.”
Lettie stopped rocking. “Don’t you talk like that,” she said.
“That’s just Bible,” Cole said to her. “It’s just a way of putting things. He don’t mean anything bad about Barbara-Jean.”
“He better not,” Lettie said. “And he better not talk like that about her. Why does he have to say anything? He got what he wanted, didn’t he? You all got what you wanted. Why don’t you all just keep quiet about it now?”
Avery didn’t pay her any attention. “I’ve got the papers here to fill out for getting married,” he said to me. “It’s got to be done quick. There’s only a couple of days left.”
I guess I didn’t have to fill out those papers. I guess I could have gotten out of it quick enough if I wanted to. But I guess I didn’t want to.
We got married in Key West the day before the barge had to sail. I wore my dress for it and my high heels and a hat, and while we were going across in the outboard I had to keep one hand on my hat and one hand on my skirt because Lettie kept poking her elbow into me and showing me how my skirt was blowing up. Then when we got on the dock I took out my lipstick and started to put it on, and Avery grabbed it right out of my hand. There were people all around and I didn’t know what to do. So I tried to make out that it was all in fun and I said, “Now come on, Avery. You give me back my lipstick so I can look nice for you.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want sinful paints and powders on my wife,” and he threw the lipstick down and stamped on it so that it was just a red smear.
Then I got real mad. I said, “That was my lipstick. I bought that lipstick out of my own money. Now you’ll have to get me another one, Avery, because I’m not getting married looking like any old mess.”
“Come on,” he said.
“Not until you tell me I’m getting a new lipstick. You know what a lipstick costs?”
That was when he slapped me. Before I knew what he was doing he swung his hand and caught me across the face so hard that I almost fell. I put my hand up to where it hurt, and I could see everybody looking at me, and I wanted to die. And worst of all was the way Lettie stood there, not saying anything, not seeing anything.
So I got married without lipstick, and what I remember of it was the preacher saying, “Do you, Barbara-Jean Sylvester, take this man—” and “Do you, Michael Avery, take this woman—” and being surprised to find that Avery had such a nice first name. Michael was always one of my favorite names. Still and all, I never got around to calling him Michael. It was just plain Avery to me because that’s the way I saw it.
Afterward we stopped at a store and waited while Lettie went in to do some shopping. It was a dry-goods store, and when she came out she had a package with her done up so you couldn’t tell what it was. When we got back to the house she took me into her bedroom and showed me that it was a wedding present, a nightgown and a brand-new linen sheet. It wasn’t much of a nightgown, very plain and old-fashioned, but it was a surprise because of the way Lettie had been going around with that stone face, and I was glad enough to get it. And the sheet was beautiful. It was so white and new that it was shiny when we put it on the bed, not like all our other patchy old sheets.
While she was tucking the sheet in Lettie said, “You and your man will sleep here tonight. Cole and I can make do in your room, because it’s only for one night anyhow,” and I think she wanted to say more, the way she took her time over that sheet, but she didn’t. And there were a lot of things I wanted to say to her and ask her about, but I didn’t either. It was always hard to talk to Lettie about anything that mattered.
After supper I went over to the cove to pick up my scrapbook and the special movie magazines which were all about Jimmy, and to tell Sebastiano good-bye. When I left the cove I felt a little sad because I knew I wouldn’t see him any more. But that’s how it is with people. You think they’ll always be around, and then you have to say good-bye to them and start all over again.
NINE
I wasn’t sure how Avery would take to the scrapbook and magazines so I came into the house through the kitchen where nobody could see, and I took them into my room where my things were packed and waiting. There would be high tide early next morning, and the tug would be around to pick up the barge and head north. It wouldn’t leave much time once we got up, so I had everything ready—the box with my coat in it and Cole’s big old suitcase that he gave me to hold my other stuff. I put the scrapbook and magazines and Sebastiano’s book in the suitcase out of sight just to make sure, and then I went out on the porch.
Cole was the only one there with any life in him. He was all beered up and full of talk about the restaurant and the way he would fix it up, but Lettie was still the old stone face and Avery just sat in a chair all bent over, his face in his hands, and it didn’t look like either of them were listening. So I sat down on the top step and waited. And the more I waited, the worse I felt. It was the kind of feeling you get from eating something spoiled, but I knew I hadn’t. It was just from being scared.
After a while Lettie said, “Well, I’m going to bed. I’ve got a day’s work ahead of me tomorrow,” and went inside. Then Cole finished one more bottle of beer and went tagging along after her, so that Avery and I were all alone. We didn’t say anything to each other, we just sat like two bumps on a log, and I got to thinking that if he felt anywhere near as sick as I did we sure made a sad team.
Finally Avery stirred himself. He stood up and, went into the house and I let him go. About a minute later he came to the door and said through the screen to me, “What are you waiting for?” so I went in, too. I felt a little better when he talked like that. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do but I figured he did, so if he would just take over for the time being it would make things a lot easier.
The nightgown was laid out on the shiny new sheet. I turned my back on Avery while I slipped it on over my head and got my clothes off from under it, but when I turned around again he was still standing there all dressed and just looking at me. So I let him look. I knew we were married, and if that was what he wanted, it was all right with me. Then all of a sudden he said, “I must pray,” and he did. He got down on his knees and started praying to himself, his lips hardly moving. And kept on and on at it like someone in real trouble.
I wasn’t too much surprised by that. I thought, well, anybody prays so hard over breakfast every morning is bound to make even more of something like this, but I felt dumb just standing there. Then I thought that whatever happens next sure enough has to happen in bed, so I got into the bed on Lettie’s side and lay there very quiet. I tried to keep my eyes closed, but the light on the ceiling was shining into them and showing me the red and yellow and purple spots swimming around inside the eyes and that always made me feel crawly. So I looked up at the light and the bugs buzzing around it and banging into it, and thought how much they sounded like Avery while he was praying.
Finally he got up and pulled out the light. He sat down on Cole’s side of the bed and took off his shoes, dropping them on the floor clunk-clunk, one after another. Then without taking off anything else he lay down on the bed alongside of me but not touching me and looked up at the ceiling the way I was doing. It wasn’t easy to keep apart in that bed because it sloped down in the middle, but we did it. And that’s all that happened. We just lay there, and after a while I heard Avery start to snore so that I knew he was asleep. And I lay there listening to him and to the breakers rumbling on the beach and
slapping up against the dock and to the Navy planes zooming over the house on their way out to the Gulf for night practice, and it was the longest night I ever put in.
It was Lettie woke me up. She was shaking me by the shoulder, and when I got my eyes open it took me a minute to remember why I was in her bed. Then I saw that the sun was up and Avery was gone. “You better get a move on,” Lettie said. “The tug’s coming in now, and you don’t have time to waste. Your man had his breakfast and went on the barge an hour ago.”
She kept shaking me until I sat up and got my feet on the floor, but then instead of walking out to let me get dressed the way she did every morning she bent down over the sheet and started looking at it this way and that, as if there was a hole in the middle of it, or a pin stuck in it she wanted to find. That was when I thought Avery’s craziness must really be catching. The way she looked at the sheet was enough to scare you. And when she stood up and pointed at it her hand was shaking and her face was all twisted up. There was no color in it either. It was going dead gray while I watched.
“That’s where you slept with him last night, wasn’t it?” she said. “Right there, wasn’t it?”
“Sure, Ma. You know that.”
“I know that,” she said. “Yes, I know that. Maybe I know too much now.”
She came over to me and pulled at the nightgown. “Give me that,” she said. “Get it off quick. I want to see for myself.”
The Winter After This Summer Page 23