Color Him Dead

by Charles Runyon

  He closed the door gently, irritated by the icy formality of her tone. The night seemed to have cooled the friendly intimacy of the day before.

  Lena entered with a loaded serving tray, going wide around him as though he were a savage beast chained to the wall. A minute later she returned from the balcony and departed in a furtive, fearful scurry. Drew strolled over to the bookcase and pulled out a slim gray volume. Gems of Poetry. His hands trembled as he riffled the cheap yellowed pages. He’d received the book as a prize in the fifth grade and had loaned it to Edith in an attempt to raise her cultural level. There should be an inscription on the title page: To Drew Simmons for Perfect Spelling, from Miss Garrison. That would prove—

  Nothing. Only a ragged margin remained where the page had been ripped out. Who had obliterated this remnant of her past? Ian, or Edith herself?

  He replaced the book and noticed the heavy silver ashtray on the coffee table. He picked it up, remembering the night Edith had given it to him: “Drew, see that hunk of cork in the center? You knock your pipe out on that.” He’d felt her eyes pleading for his approval. But he’d known the gift came from her husband’s store, and he hadn’t liked what that made him. “You’ll have to take it back tomorrow.” But later that evening she’d taken her nail file and etched his name deeply inside the bowl. She’d been so childishly triumphant at having the last word that he’d laughed, and the ashtray had remained.

  Now the cork island in the center was battered and chewed; the silver had turned gray and the green felt of the base was eaten away. And his name—

  Someone had tried to efface that too, but the four letters were still visible beneath an overlay of newer scratches.

  He looked up as the bathroom door opened. Edith approached in silver sandals, black silk trousers and a high-collared Chinese silk jacket. He felt warmed by the knowledge that she’d adorned herself for his eyes, but he kept to his purpose.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  She gazed with sullen disinterest at the ashtray. “It must be Ian’s.”

  “He doesn’t smoke a pipe. This is for pipesmokers.”

  She shrugged. “It’s always been here. That’s all I know.”

  “There used to be a name carved in it. Look.”

  She wouldn’t take the ashtray. She bent to peer into the bowl where he pointed, and he caught the distracting fragrance of her perfume. “I just see scratches.”

  “There are letters. D-R-E-W.”

  “Oh yes.” She looked up and smiled. “Then it must be Mr. Drew’s. Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

  Sighing, he put down the ashtray and followed her out onto the balcony. Drew’s breakfast was juice of sour-sop in a frosted glass, sausage, a cantaloupe, and an egg in a silver cup. For Edith there was a single poached egg, a glass of orange juice, and one slice of toast with orange marmalade. He watched her eat, remembering their rare breakfasts together, when they’d gone early to the lake and eaten at the hotel restaurant. She’d put away enormous meals: hot-cakes, eggs, sausage, sweet rolls. He wondered if the complete turnabout was a weight-watching measure, or a result of her amnesia. He knew so little about the subject.

  Lena crept in and spirited away their empty plates as though she were committing an act of theft. Drew poured out two cups of coffee and decided Edith could stand another nudge.

  “You like poetry?”

  She lifted her cup. “That would depend, I think, on the poem.”

  “This girl I told you about once wrote me a poem. I can remember only two lines: ‘Where two young hearts like driftwood dance, upon the restless waves of chance.’ ”

  Edith sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “I don’t think she was in love with you.”

  “She said so.”

  “Because she thought you’d swallow it. Same with the young hearts bit. She laid it down because she figured that’s what you had to have before you’d take her to bed. That’s all she wanted from you.”

  Drew laughed softly. “Have you always been this cynical?”

  She looked down at her cup. “Please, not again.”

  “I’m curious. Did amnesia change your personality?” He saw that her hand was trembling on her cup. He went on: “How does it feel to have no past? As though you’d come out of an egg just yesterday—”

  She brought her cup smashing down into her saucer, shattering it into fragments. Both jumped up to avoid the rivulets which trickled off the marble top. Lena glided out with a cloth, betraying the fact that she’d remained within earshot.

  “Leave it, fool!” Edith’s voice cracked like a whip. “Get downstairs. Don’t come back until I ring.”

  When she was gone, Edith turned on Drew. There was a white line around her lips. “From now on I’d rather you watched me from a distance, Mr. Seright. You keep gouging at me, trying to dig up my past. Damn, can’t you see it just upsets me?”

  “That’s because you fight it.”

  Her fists clenched. “I do not. I—” She whirled away and gripped the iron railing facing the sea. When she spoke again her voice was low. “I don’t know, maybe I do. I try not to think about it. I feel it back there, hovering, something clammy and evil. I want to keep it away as … as long as I can.” She turned to face him, and her eyes were misty. “Look, will you just leave me alone? You disturb hell out of me, and I don’t want … I’m not supposed to be … disturbed.”

  Her throat worked, and he saw that she was on the verge of crying. He didn’t want to see that.

  “I’ll get the boat ready,” he said, turning away.

  “No. I really don’t feel like skiing.”

  He saw another day slipping by and felt a tingle of desperation. “We’ll do something else. You have a black swimsuit?”

  “I don’t want to—” She stopped. “There’s a two-piece I made myself. Why?”

  “I don’t want the sharks to mistake you for a fish. We’re going skin-diving.”

  She shook her head and smiled wanly. “You’ve got more activities up your sleeve than a recreational director. How do you know I can skin-dive?”

  “There’s equipment in the shed.”

  “And of course Ian isn’t the type.” She nodded abruptly. “Okay. I’ll meet you at the jetty."

  She clung tightly to his arm as they floated above the submerged ridge. Her fingers dug into his flesh when a school of needle fish flashed below like a flight of silver arrows. He knew she was suffering that first paralyzing fear of drifting in a strange new world of distorted shadows and blurred, wavering shapes.

  Gradually she loosened her grip and swam freely beside him. The launch followed, guided by Ti-Cock who sat in the stern with an oar. Drew swam down to a blur of white sand fifteen feet below the surface. He jabbed with the point of his spear, saw the tell-tale jet of fleeing clams, and seized one before it could burrow too deeply. He turned to see Edith beside him, her cheeks hollowed by the grip of the snorkel. The water had rounded the contours of her body, producing two mounds high on her chest where her bouyant breasts struggled to escape the unelasticized confines of her homemade suit. He put the clam in her outstretched hand, then saw a parrotfish nosing out from behind a rock outcropping. He kicked himself forward with the gun held in front of him. Five feet from the fish he squeezed the trigger. There was a chug! the fish jerked and released a bright blue cloud of blood. He returned to the surface and swam back to the boat with Edith beside him.

  “It’s so quiet down there,” she said when they were aboard. “At first I had a horrible feeling of falling through space, but then it was like flying.”

  He watched her peel off her bathing cap and shake out her hair. “Next time we’ll try it with the tanks. Go down to where it starts getting dark.”

  “Ooooh, don’t rush me, Seright. I’m not at home down there like you are. You went after that fish like … like a hunting falcon. Do they all have such funny-looking blood?”

  “All blood is blue until the oxygen hits it. In the water it takes longer.” />
  “Oh.” She held up the clam. “What do I do with this?”

  “Eat it. Here.” He pried open the valves and ran his knife around the inside to cut the meat away from the shell. He held it out to her, and her nose wrinkled with distaste. “Raw?”

  “Certainly. A little lemon helps, but I forgot to bring any.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and popped the clam into her mouth. A moment later her eyes flew wide. “Why it’s good. How did you find out about them?”

  “I’ve been living off the sea—and the land.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “There’s nothing but rats there.”

  “There’s agouti, manicou, wild goats, birds … I’ll have Ti-Cock drop us on the west side of the island and we’ll look at my ‘gouti traps.”

  He could see her face change from open eagerness to a closed wariness. “No … I’d better get back. We’ll be watched wherever we go.”

  He shrugged and started the engine. He didn’t speak again until they were walking up the beach from the jetty. “I’d like to sketch you this afternoon, if you’ll wear that green bikini.”

  She hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Meet me at the banyan tree after lunch.”

  He climbed to the shack and found that Leta hadn’t returned from the capital, where she’d gone for his weekly copy of Time. He ate the cold remains of a langouste tail she’d cooked that morning, then went down and found Edith waiting under the banyan. She let him pose her seated on a chunk of black basalt, knees slightly apart, elbows resting on her thighs, and her chin in her hands.

  “It’s hard to talk in this pose,” she said as he began sketching.

  “After I get the face you can talk. See if you can look thoughtful. Not puzzled, more reflective. Lower your eyelids and relax your lips. Perfect. Now hold it.”

  Her look of inward contemplation took shape beneath his carbon pencil—but it was a much younger face than the one before him. It was thinner, sharper and more aggressive, with hair as black as midnight sweeping across her forehead.

  “You can talk,” he said finally.

  She gave a deep sigh. “What do models and artists say to each other?”

  “Inanities. Lovely day, how’s your family? Don’t clamp your knees together, Edith. Makes your hips bulge.”

  Her face reddened, but she opened her knees slightly. She sat in an attitude of strained embarrassment. Drew sketched hurriedly, knowing that she was incapable of sitting still for long. Ten years ago the original of the sketch had taken three sittings….

  He heard the spash of oars and turned to see Leta’s cousin rowing away from the beach. Leta walked through the hissing surf carrying her white shoes and holding her red dress hitched up around her thighs. She stopped when she saw them, then turned quickly and started walking down the beach the other way. Drew remembered that Leta had testified against Edith in court.

  “Leta,” he called. “Over here.”

  Leta came dragging her bare feet in the sand. She stopped ten feet away and looked down at her toes. “ ‘Sieur, no magazine. The man say maybe tomorrow—”

  “Girl, what are you doing here?”

  Edith’s voice was a harsh crackle that made Drew cringe inwardly. He hadn’t thought how rough it would be on Leta.

  Leta answered in a near whisper. “I work for the mister.”

  “You what? Speak up.”

  “I work for the mister … madame.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I cook and wash … madame.”

  “In those clothes?”

  The red party dress suddenly looked out of place on Leta. For the first time Drew noticed the faint eversion of her lips, the flatness at the root of her nose. He was sweating with embarrassment for Leta.

  “She’s been to town, Edith.” To Leta he said: “You can go.”

  When she was gone, Drew looked at Edith. Her lips were tight and she was obviously angry, but it wasn’t because she’d recognized Leta.

  “She’s too damn pretty for a servant. I suppose you’re sleeping with her.”

  With a half-smile, Drew said: “She has a cot in the next room.”

  Edith’s lips pinched more tightly. “You may be interested to learn that ninety per cent of these girls are diseased.”

  Drew kept his smile in place. “I’ll get a Wasserman test first thing tomorrow.”

  “I think you’d better get rid of her. Lena can clean your shack, Meline can cook—”

  “And what function will you take over?”

  “You can go to hell.” She jumped up and started pulling on her beach coat.

  “Wait, your picture—”

  “Let her pose. You can do it in color.”

  He watched her stride angrily up the beach with her coat flowing out behind her. Then he shrugged and turned back to his drawing. He didn’t need her for the picture, he could do it from memory. Just change the rock to a bathroom stool, strike out the bikini and leave her nude … there … it was identical to the one which had appeared in the papers.

  He walked to the house and knocked on her door. There was no answer; only the hum of a sewing machine. He ripped the picture off the pad and slid it under her door, then stood back and waited. Two minutes later he heard the patter of her slippers on the floor. A moment later came her half-whispered exclamation: “Oh, no! That isn’t me.”

  “Yes it is, Edith.”

  He heard a loud rip, followed by another, then another. His sketch came sliding out from beneath the door in eight pieces. “Don’t ever ask me to pose again, or … anything.”

  He knocked once and waited. He knocked again. A glass crashed against the door, followed by the tinkle of fragments on the floor. He touched his finger to the stream of liquid which ran from beneath the door. Rum. He turned and walked down the stairs. At the bottom he met Lena going up with a broom and dustpan.

  He found Leta in the clearing beside the cookshack, squatting on her haunches, scrubbing her old gray dress on a flat rock. She wore only a pair of red silk panties someone had given her, with white script embroided above her right thigh: Good night lover. It was easy to see how the old dress had grown threadbare; she twisted and flailed it as though it were a live snake which had to be killed. Her brows were drawn into a fierce frown, and each time she stopped to pour water from an earthen jar, she gave a soul-wrenching sniffle and brushed her eyes with her wrist.

  Drew watched her for a minute, appreciating the gleaming body, the breasts like oiled bronze, the muscle-tight trembling buttocks. An aching pressure had been building in his loins during the hours with Edith. He walked up behind Leta and put his hand on the nape of her neck. She froze, then twisted her head and gave him a smouldering look:

  “She put the fire in you, go have her put it out.”

  She turned back to her work. Drew lowered himself to the ground a few feet away and lit a cigarette. Leta was restful, even when angry. When he didn’t like her mood, he waited for it to change. Her tears came and went like summer showers.

  “I’m wondering why she didn’t recognize you,” he said after a minute.

  “All black girls look alike to white people.” Her voice held only a residual trace of resentment. “You did not know that, Dudu?”

  “I do not believe it, Leta.”

  Silently she twisted the garment into a rope and wrung out the water.

  “I did not see her much. The master forbid us to go near her. And in the court she only sit, seeing nothing, like my radio when it is turned off.” She stretched the dress out on the grass, then got up and went into the shack. After a moment he followed her. He found her in the bedroom picking at his old denim shirt.

  “What are you doing?”

  She jumped. “Just … cleaning your shirt.”

  Her guilt made him suspicious. He caught her wrist, opened her palm, and saw a long copper hair. He felt like laughing but he made his voice stern: “You were going to hex her, weren’t you?”

  She looked down at her hands. “It
was not bad obeah, to hurt her. That is against the law. I only wish to make you stop loving her.”

  “Don’t waste your magic,” he said. “I don’t love her.”

  “No? Then why do you wish her to remember you from before?”

  He frowned. “What makes you think I do?”

  “Today you call me so that she can see me. You think if she remember me, she will remember you from before you—” She stopped and bit her lip. “From before.”

  “From before what?”

  She looked up, meeting his eyes. “From before you went to prison.”

  He felt the icy calm spread over his body. Slowly he sat down on the bed, lifted his legs and stretched out on his back. He stared at the peeling plywood ceiling until he was sure he had his voice under control, then he said: “Tell me where you got the idea I’d been in prison.”

  “I have thought this for a long time.”

  “Yes. Tell me why.”

  “Well … you remember the first time we … made love? You are so quick, like a young boy with his first woman. After you go I feel sad because your eyes tell me it was no good for you. And when I go to the house you give me a drink and put your hand on my shoulder, gentle for the first time, and you say—you remember what you say?”

  “No.”

  “You say, ‘Ten years is a long time.’ And I think, where is it that a man lives for ten years without a woman? And my mind tells me, prison.”

  “Why didn’t you ask?”

  “Because I think, if you wish to talk about it, you will tell me. Many things I wonder, but I do not ask. How old are you? I cannot guess. The eyes say fifty, but the body is hard. I wish to ask, you have a wife? But this is important to me only if it is important to you. I cannot see you share your life with a woman, or come to the island like other blanc to keep from paying money to their wives. I see the wounds in the leg and in the side, and I think that a gun has made them, but I do not ask.” She rose from the bed and picked up the kerosene lamp. “I do not ask now. But I listen if you wish to tell me.”

  “Have you wondered what will happen when she remembers me?”