Color Him Dead

by Charles Runyon

  “Noooo …”

  He felt her hesitant movement and a sour anger filled him. Edith you fool, why didn’t you do this before? Now there was only pain and a tender agony each time she moved. He tried to leave her but her knees rocked up. She sobbed once and her calves came down hard on the small of his back; the wall at the end of the channel opened, and he felt himself drawn in until only his body prevented further entry. The painful heat became a half-pleasure as her hips moved jerkily without rhythm. He felt himself shut out now in a different way. She was taking a private ride and he could not join her; he felt a vague regret that he had not waited for her. Suddenly all her movement stopped; she froze, trembling, like a stone poised on the lip of a precipice. Then with a long shuddering sigh she collapsed; her legs dropped to his side and she lay with her head twisted back, her tendons standing out like cords, the air hissing between her clenched teeth.

  He looked down at her, and he felt a strange guilt, knowing she would not want to be seen this way. All her defenses were down; her face looked fallen and pinched—old, old. And he realized that all before had been phony and faked, a skillful pose of passion. Here was Edith unadorned; Edith as she had never been since she was ten and her brother took her beneath the willows. He felt excitement swell his chest; he had a godlike feeling of universality, an awareness of life and all its labyrinthine turnings. Edith who had never become a virgin, had never lost her virginity. Now at last perhaps she had become a woman.

  He felt the surf on his legs, and saw that their struggle had carried them into the water. Her hair floated around her head like a copper halo. When the sea receded it lay wet on the sand, with black granules caught in its shining strands. He felt his exhilaration fade. It was too late, ten years too late. He rose, feeling that flat and tasteless regret that a man feels when he leaves a whore for whom he has paid too much.

  She opened her eyes. His feelings must have shown on his face, for she said, with a weak and tremulous smile: “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s no need—”

  “Don’t be gallant. I spoiled it. I wanted to make it good for you, but something happened.”

  “Tell me how you felt.”

  She sat up, frowning. “When?”

  “When you were fighting, when you asked who I was.”

  “That.” Her face clouded. “I’ll try to explain … later.”

  She jumped up and ran into the surf. She made a shallow dive and came up swimming in strong swift strokes, straight out to the open sea. He dived and swam after her, seizing her around the waist. She shrieked and twisted in his arms, laughing. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. “Seright, I love you!”

  Then, wrapping her legs around his waist, she arched her back and pulled him beneath the surface. He returned her embrace and felt her lips touch his in a cold, half-numb kiss. He held her as they sank into a green twilight, until the pressure became a thin high whistle in his ears. Then he pulled her to the surface and floated on his back, looking up at the clouds which scudded like soap foam on blued water. It seemed to him that sky and water had blended, and he hung between them, rocking gently on a soft mist.

  He felt her hand slide into his, fingers intertwining. “Did we ever do that before?”

  “Which?”

  “The whole business … make love, swim nude….”

  He turned to look at her. She was the picture of serenity, her face unmarred by worry. She floated with her eyes closed, her face submerged to the temples. Her breasts were two objects separated from her, swaying gently in the wavelets, their pale tips almost colorless in the sunlight, pinched tight by the cool water.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Do you remember?”

  “Just a feeling. When you were about to … begin, I felt it had all happened before and ended in some horrible tragedy. I was frightened. I wanted you to stop because I was afraid it would end the same way this time. But then I was glad you didn’t.” She came closer, and her hip brushed his. “Because after that first scare it was right for me. I wasn’t pinched and tight any more; it wasn’t skill or practice or just going through motions I’d learned. I just wanted it all inside me. I never felt like that before. I always wanted to be on top—not literally, I mean, but in control—”

  “Let’s get back to your memory.”

  She was silent a moment. “I think … we’d better not. I don’t want to spoil our day.”

  Abruptly she rolled over and started swimming toward the rock, now a hundred yards away. She called back over her shoulder: “Last one ashore eats bully beef!"

  He awoke in fear, as always. A shadow had passed over him briefly; now he sat up, wide-awake, and scanned the horizon. He saw the float-plane low in the west, banking toward the capital. Tourists coming, he thought—or Doxie, or those self-consciously worldly young men from the FBI—

  He didn’t want to think about it. He crawled over Edith’s sleeping figure and found his cigarettes half-buried in the sand. His shorts were beside them and he pulled them on, painfully aware that his untanned midsection had burned while he slept in the sun.

  How long? The sun said four … five o’clock. Damn, gotta go. Another day lost—but a day to remember….

  He regarded the ten square feet of gouged and furrowed sand where they had lain after eating. He had been applying suntan lotion to her body, touching the same tender curvings he had once rubbed with baby oil, feeling the growing tremors in her flesh, hearing the huskiness in her voice: “The sun never hits me there, Seright … no, don’t stop …“ It was different this time; the tearing passion was there, but she made no attempt to reduce him to the status of a disembodied appendage. She searched out his mood and his rhythm, blended her movement with his, and for the first time they made that long dive together….

  He looked at the bas-relief he had made of her in the sand. The sea had eaten it away at the edges, but the shape remained, and the two pink shells she had placed atop the mounded bosoms. She had been like a child, and had told him of a dry stream bed where a skinny, big-eyed child called Edie had once built a castle. But when he had tried to bring her memory forward to include himself, her face had clouded with concern, then hardened with a brittle glaze of false gaiety. He had a feeling that her life with him was the root of her amnesia, the core of the onion, which would not appear until all else had been peeled away.

  I’ve got to have more time, he thought.

  He looked down at the half-eaten sandwich in her hand. Like a child, she had fallen asleep eating. Her lips were half-open, swollen and red from the countless kisses she had given him. An ant crawled over her stomach, halted at the brink of the crater which was her navel, then veered left toward a thick forest which caught red-black highlights from the low sun. Drew flicked off the ant and pressed his lips to the spot, blowing a flatulent sound against her stomach.

  She sat up, gasping.

  “Time to go, Edith.”

  She frowned peevishly, then broke into a yawn which made her jaws crackle. “I can think of better ways to wake up.” She gave him an oblique look, then her eyes traveled down to his shorts. “You sneak. You closed up the shop while I wasn’t looking.”

  Drew laughed and dropped her clothes in her lap. “You’re sick, you know that?”

  “Mmmm.” She fumbled the halter onto her shoulders, then turned her back to him. “Do me. I’m all thumbs.”

  He started tying the ends. “You’re supposed to put the other part on first.”

  “You don’t say. It happens that most women prefer this sequence when there’s no man around.”

  “And if he is, why reverse it?”

  “To be more provocative. Women think the other part is ugly.”

  “Women have no taste.” He finished the knot and slid his arms around her waist. Her stomach gurgled, trembling against his palms. It made him feel intimate and close to her. “Tell me though, if she’s getting dressed, the party’s over. Why provoke?”

  “For the next time,
of course.” She put her hands over his and raised them, brushing up her halter. Her breasts filled his hands. “And since you brought it up, when?”

  “I was thinking about tonight.”

  She laughed softly. “We’re both sick.” Her hands pressed hard against his, flattening her breasts beneath his palms. She drew a long hissing breath between her teeth. “Lord, I feel like I’ve saved up for ten years. I don’t suppose …”

  “I have to swim back.”

  “Then you’d better unhand me right now.”

  His hands felt empty and cold when she was gone. He watched her dress, enjoying the hunched wriggle with which she confined her breasts beneath the halter, and the spraddled pelvic thrust which got the shorts up over her full hips. He was sorry to hear the final snick of her zipper.

  “About tonight,” he said. “This time you follow orders.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, bending to pick up her belongings. “I’ll Simonize my watch.”

  “You’d better. I’ll be watching your place at ten. If it’s safe, flick your lights off, then on again. If it isn’t—”

  “I’ll die.”

  “Just don’t do anything. If it isn’t safe to meet me it isn’t safe to signal. Otherwise I’ll be waiting under the big banyan.”

  She turned, frowning. ”That isn’t safe.”

  “We’ll just meet there. I’ll think of a place by then.”

  “Build me a bower in the grass. I want to look up at the stars.”

  He helped her get the dinghy beyond the surf line, then steadied it while she settled herself at the tiller. “You haven’t forgotten that I leave in two days?”

  She looked desolate. “I had forgotten. I hoped we could go on and on—”

  “We can. Meet me with your bag packed.”

  “Oh, Seright! Where could we go?”

  “There are some small French islands thirty miles north of here. We’ll take the launch, some extra fuel, food and water. If we leave at midnight we’ll be there by dawn.”

  “He knows those islands. He’d kill you. And me—” She shuddered. “Don’t mention it again. Don’t even mention the two days we have left. Something will happen by then.”

  As he listened to the fading purr of her dinghy, he thought: Yes, it sure as hell will. He repacked his waterproof bag, hoping that Charles had returned with the launch—and without Ian. Edith would probably get violent when her love tryst turned into an abduction, but he had no more time to be subtle. He decided to bring a clean cloth when he met her. No need to stuff a dirty sock in her mouth….

  It was nearly dark when he dragged himself up to the shack, feeling drained and cold. Leta turned from the cookpot with a white smile. “I fix you langouste.”

  He wanted to rest, but on his last night he could be kind. He bent over the pot. “Good.”

  She slid an arm around his waist and pressed her hip against his. He stiffened involuntarily, and she drew away. “You have no fire in you.”

  “I … swam too much.”

  “Yes,” she said in a flat, dead voice, turning back to the cookpot. “Too much time in the sea.”

  At nine the launch returned with Charles and Ti-cock aboard and anchored twenty yards out from the jetty. Drew made a single bundle of his clothes, food and a bottle of water, and stowed it in the grass behind the banyan. When he returned, Leta lay on her cot in the dark, smoking. She’d wake up in the morning and assume he’d run from Chaka. It was cruel, but it was the lesser of two cruelties.

  He strapped the plastic-handled diving knife to his belt, shoved the gun in his pocket, and climbed up the fort with his binoculars. A light burned behind the closed drapes of Edith’s room. He waited, slapping at mosquitoes. Usually the wind kept them off, but the night was still. Minutes dragged by. The moon would be up in less than an hour; he’d hoped to be at sea—

  There. Movement behind the drapes. One of those figures had to be that cook, Meline. And there was Lena. Where’s Edith? I’ll count to ten, then go down on some pretense—

  Grass whispered behind him. He whirled with his hand on his knife.

  “The woman is waiting,” came Leta’s voice from the blackness.

  “Where?”

  “In our house.”

  Edith sat at the table in the yellow light of the kerosene lamp. Her appearance gave advance notice of disaster. Her white blouse was torn; her hair hung over her forehead entangled with blades of grass; a leg protruded from the slit in her wraparound skirt, and Drew saw a dark wetness oozing from a skinned knee. Her eyes looked glazed in the lamplight, then he saw the rum bottle before her.

  “It’s all off,” she said flatly. “Ian knows.”

  Drew felt the icy calm settle over him as he sat down opposite her. “Don’t say it’s off. What happened?”

  She sighed and reached for the bottle. Drew caught her hand. “Save it until you tell me.”

  She clenched her fists on the table top. “He flew over in his plane this afternoon. Then he went home and sent Charles back with this note—”

  She opened her left hand and a sweat-damp ball of paper plopped on the table. He flattened it and read the message written in a precise, unhurried hand:

  My dear Edith:

  I hadn’t the heart to break up your little idyll on the rock. Charles has been instructed to close up the house and bring you with him. Although you could intimidate him, I’m sure we both know how pointless this would be. Your friend Seright is to join my other men at Diamond, where I will shortly have need of men skilled in his art. I do not mean painting. Tell him that I now have his past references, and will let him choose between me and his former patron.

  IAN

  Drew looked up. “Is Doxie back?”

  “Why … I don’t know. Why?”

  Drew wadded the note in a tight fist. “He must be. Did anyone see you come here?”

  “I don’t know. They were busy packing and I … went out the bathroom window, came down a tree, and crawled through the grass. But I can’t stay—”

  “Good God! You plan to just walk back to him?”

  “I’ve got to. But you don’t.” She opened her right hand, and a half-dozen glittering objects rattled on the table. Drew saw the sparkle of diamond earrings, the red glow of a ruby brooch, the green fire of an emerald ring. “Take these and go to those islands you told me about. I’ll try to join you … someday.”

  “I won’t go without you.”

  “Seright, you can’t stay!” Her voice trembled on the edge of hysteria. “He won’t give you that job—he wants you at Diamond so he can amuse himself before he kills you! He saw us out there and he’d never let a man get away with that. I can’t understand why he’s given you a choice, but—”

  “He gave me no choice. Don’t you remember my other patron was the State of Indiana? I was doing life for murder.” He leaned toward her. ”You remember. You put me there.”

  She stared, her mouth open. “What?”

  “You’re the girl who killed her husband.”

  Her tongue came out and wet her lips. “Oh, no. No. The girl in that story … she was a selfish bitch. I didn’t even like her. I couldn’t do the things she did. I couldn’t kill—”

  “You did. You held the gun two feet from his head and pulled the trigger. The bullet went into his forehead. The impact knocked his glasses down on his nose but he didn’t need them any more.”

  Her face was twisted as though she were about to cry. “Why … why are you saying these things? I came up here to help you. I …” She pushed the jewels toward him. Her hands were shaking. “Here, they’re yours …”

  He struck the table with his fist. “Think, dammit! These are worthless to me. If I tried to sell them I’d go back to prison, where you put me. You! Remember? You could have gotten away with five years, or maybe ten, but no, here was this stupid kid standing by, loyal jackass. So you took the stand and you made it look so bad that they sentenced me to death—”

  “It wasn’t me!”
/>
  “Ask your husband if it was. He knows. He has to, if he knows about me. He must have known before I came. Why else would he talk about your killer instinct?”

  She jumped up, her eyes wild. He caught her wrist and yanked her back into the chair and held her there. She stared in trapped fear as he took the knife from his belt and walked behind her. Leaning over her shoulder, he saw a sheen of sweat on the full swell of her breasts. It did nothing for him; Whale Rock seemed long ago and far away.

  “You’re going to remember, Edith.” He spoke in a cold calm voice, vaguely aware of Leta watching from the doorway. “You’re going back to that apartment we shared. I’ll help you.” With the point of his knife, he etched a square on the table top. “Here’s the living room. The body lay here, halfway between the door and the coffee table. On the coffee table was that silver ashtray you’ve got up in your room—”

  “Was there a telephone?” Her voice was dull, her face looked gray and old.

  “Yes.”

  “What …” She licked her lips. “What was the number?”

  “Talbot 4-1315.”

  Her face turned the color of a mushroom. “Oh, God! No!”

  She jumped up, cracking her head against his chin. It stunned him for an instant, and when his head cleared, he saw the table overturned and the lamp sputtering on the floor. He grabbed for a white shape in the darkness. A slashing pain raked his forearm. He felt a trickle of warm blood and realized she had the knife. He lunged for her, but his legs tangled in the overturned chair and he fell. He heard her running footsteps out the door as he got to his feet, holding his thumb inside his elbow to stop the blood. The acrid stench of kerosene filled the air; flames began to flicker up the wall. He saw Leta starting out the door with the long curved cutlass in her fist.

  “Leta! Give me that!”

  “I go kill her for you.”

  He wrenched the cutlass from her hand. “Throw dirt on the fire. If that doesn’t stop it, run!”

  He hurried down the path. Edith would be harder to handle now, but none of his plans had to be changed. The moon sat on the cap like a halved yellow orange. He saw Edith waiting halfway down the slope. She held out her hands in an attitude of supplication.